Make your own social media

Have you noticed the reach of your business’ Facebook page declining? Are less people seeing your posts? You’re not alone. Facebook has admitted their algorithm has changed, publicly stating: “We expect organic distribution of an individual page’s posts to gradually decline over time as we continually work to make sure people have a meaningful experience on the site.”

Translation: they want you to buy ads or promoted posts. Really, this doesn’t come as too big of a surprise. Facebook is a business: they were giving away something for free and now they want you to pay for it.

What does this mean for your business? You’re going to really have to up the quantity and quality of your content to get your posts seen. Or dig out your wallets.

This is also a lesson in not putting all your social media eggs into one basket. If the people who hang out on Facebook are your target audience, then you should keep a presence on there. But you should also be looking at other social channels that make sense for your business. You need to be looking at what social channels your target audience is using and how you can best leverage those for conversations and connections. 

One of the problems with Facebook (and Twitter and Google+) is that businesses are putting a lot of time and money into channels that they don’t own. So, if Facebook changes the game, we have to go along with it. One thing for your business to consider is putting more effort and resources into digital and social marketing channels that you do own – like your own website or blog. A blog is a great social channel that you control. You can still have conversations with your customers and share your content. And if you build up a large following (just like you did on your Facebook page with hard work and great content) you won’t have to worry about someone changing the rules and affecting your reach.

A company I used to work for created a brand new website and online photo contest as a way to connect with a large part of their target market who ride snowmobiles (www.slednsnap.com). In a way, they made their own social media site to build community with their customers.

Even if you don’t have the resources to do something on this scale, there are lots of site out there where you can start a blog or website for free. Or focus on building up your email contact lists and start using e-newsletters to reach your followers.

Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter are always going to exist and if it makes sense for your business, they can be great tools to reach customers. But always remember you’re at the mercy of someone else’s channel. Focus on media you own and you can make your own rules and fully control your own content.

What are you doing for social media marketing that’s been working?

Invest in your own media

When it comes to communicating your marketing message, there are three types of media channels you can use:

1. Paid media
2. Earned media
3. Owned media 

The differences are simple. Paid media is paid advertising, such as paying for an ad in a newspaper. Earned media is when you get some free PR from a newspaper or TV news show about something that you’re doing. For example: getting some coverage from a press release about a new product you’ve launched. Owned media are media channels that you own, like your website or blog.

The big difference between paid and owned media is control. Yes, you control what ad copy you submit to the paper, but you don’t own the channel. You can’t control where the ad ends up in the paper. And you can’t control the distribution of the newspaper either.

You may want to consider investing more of your marketing resources into your owned media. That way, you have full control over the distribution, audience and message. What would be more effective for your business: Investing $200 in a print ad, or spending $200 to improve your website? How about spending $200 to start a blog or hire someone to write for you?

Your business can be a publisher. If you have great content to share with your audience, you don’t have to pay someone to distribute it. You can publish it with your own media.

And don’t forget earned media. Sending out a well written press release about a product or event that is newsworthy could help you reach a large audience for little to no cost.

Investing in paid media may be necessary for your business to reach your customers. But consider having content that shows ownership. An idea a former manager of mine had was with radio. Instead of just airing 30 second radio spots, he wanted to have a weekly 60 second radio show. It would be company-branded and focus on answering questions our customers had. So it was still paid media, but the content was uniquely ours. We just had to pay for the channel.

In my next blog post, we’ll look a little bit more into how focusing on digital and social channels that you own can help your business.

What do you think about these different types of media? What will you be focusing on for your business?