The Wall Street Journal reports that in 2015, Facebook will restrict the commercial posts Facebook allows on pages. Understandably, Facebook needs and wants to generate more and more revenue.
While this move will affect all businesses, especially small businesses, there’s several things small business owners can do.
Invest in Paid Advertising
There’s nothing wrong with investing in paid advertising. Most of the “viral” campaigns you see and other awareness campaigns came about because companies spent money on advertising. Don’t just spend money without measuring the results of the campaign and ensuring you are getting results.
Use Direct Marketing to Reach Your Customers and Prospects
Ensure your web site, blog and email marketing are in to top shape. Ensure they look good and that the content is good and indeed serves your audience. Invest in small business sales and marketing software, like Infusionsoft, to power you business.
Also remember, search engines are indexing the “world wide web” for free – so the more great content you have online, the more chances there are for you to be found.
Invest in SEO
SEO is an expertise, and while there are many lousy SEO scam artists out there, there are also many good ones. An SEO specialist can help fine tune your content to ensure it’s at the top of search engine rankings.
Video is Amazing
Start doing video to build your branding in a much more personal way. You can do it on your own or hire a video marketing expert.
Republished by permission. Original here.
Ouch Photo via Shutterstock
First, I totally agree that you’ve got to pay to play on social networks, especially Facebook. Sure it used to be free, but people need to quit complaining and start measuring. Second, I don’t like how open to interpretation this policy is. Sounds like you could get disapproved simply because a human reviewer was having a bad day or the algorithm didn’t like what you posted.
Martin Lindeskog
Robert: I agree with your T.A.N.S.T.A.A.F.L statement! 😉 I am also wondering what will be classified as a too promotional update.
James Wang
Yes, this will be a really interesting development. I agree with you guys that it would be nice to get some clarity on how they are going to be classifying what is “too salesy”. To Facebook’s credit, their insight tools are really quite awesome, but this could quickly cramp a lot of people’s style. Let’s see how this unfolds.
Great post Marie, and you’re absolutely spot on with regard to mobile content and buyer personas. A number of e-commerce websites are not exactly taking these into consideration during the designing phase. For example, they seem to disregard the part of knowing who their audiences are, which in turn leads to ineffective SEO and online marketing campaigns. You should know who to cater to before stepping into the outreach phase.
As for the mobile content part, I can’t stress the importance of having a responsive web design and a special focus towards mobile users. Catering to them not only gives them a positive first impression of you, but it also makes you attractive to Google’s eyes. That being said, keep in mind mobile users have already exceeded desktop users, so optimizing for mobile is a requirement nowadays.