The best new strategy for the small business
Social media company Facebook recently announced its intention to make changes to both the look and purpose of its News Feed, and those changes are profound.
Put it this way: if you’re the owner of a small business and you used to rely on organic posts to grow and keep your customer base, you should be worried. Mark Zuckerberg’s de-emphasis on branded posting is going to hit you where it hurts.
At the start of 2018, Zuckerberg made clear his feelings: ‘Recently we’ve gotten feedback from our community that public content — posts from businesses, brands and media — is crowding out the personal moments [from friends and family] that lead us to connect more with each other.’
How does that impact the business owner who preferred to reach out to customers organically rather than pay expensive advertising costs? Quite soon their Facebook News Feed will be unrecognisable as a place to connect with customers, and their link to the market will be severed.
And that’s why it will hit hard, since before the changes (which are being implemented as we publish this post) businesses could potentially reach over 1 billion people in this way and, if they chose to, could pinpoint a demographic to communicate directly with.
However, there is hope. For despite Facebook’s blocking of that particular avenue, we, Snizl have found an alternative route to effective marketing using social media.
We (Snizl) are a unique business networking platform that allows businesses to promote their brands via word-of-mouth recommendations. Our software enables business owners to connect in real time with customers who follow them and to notify customers of events, competition and promotions.
In light of the recent changes to Facebook, Snizl’s approach couldn’t be clearer: a business can continue to share details of its goods and services using social media (by use of ‘Promoters’ – a little more on this in a moment).
In his post, Zuckerberg remarked that he would alter the news feed algorithm to, ‘surface relevant content that facilitates meaningful social interactions among your friends and family.’ In this way, he hopes to return Facebook to its familial roots.
It is via its use of Promoters that Snizl offers a way to circumnavigate Zuckerberg’s change. For it is from friends and family that a Snizl registered business will choose its own designated Promoters…
…and these are the users from whom Facebook wants more engagement.
Promoters are enabled through the platform to share promotions and details in exactly the same way as the source business would have done prior to the system tweak.
To share more readily they can even be incentivised with promised rewards of cash or gifts. The more customers a Promoter feeds to the business’s Snizl page the more chance they have of ‘winning the prize’ (and the more likely the business is to make a sale).
By enabling Promoters to advertise on behalf of a business Snizl solves the problem of the News Feed block. But its benefits are not confined to those who want to connect with customers on Facebook.
The platform is a user-led, interactive customer-focussed engine that is proven to drive businesses forward. It is the ideal go-to for any business wishing to connect with customers at a more personal level.
References
https://www.inc.com/larry-kim/rip-facebook-news-feed-for-publishers.html