The Social Plunge Podcast Episode 1 – Facebook Algorithm Shift

Steve: Hello, podcast listeners. Welcome to the first "Social Plunge Episode: Your Plumbing and HVAC social media optimization podcast." We're actually live here in the PlumberSEO podcast studio. I'm here with my coworker, colleague, and friend, Michelle Martin. How is it going Michelle?

Michelle: It's going well, Steve. Really excited to be here. Really glad you guys are listening. We have great information for all of you. We decided to start this podcast, because there's so much opportunity for growth in social media.

So few people, especially Plumbing and HVAC contractors, understand the importance of being present in social media. Even fewer of them understand how to take advantage of all of the opportunities they have there, especially with all the fluctuations, the way the networks like Facebook and Twitter rank their posts, and the way people see posts on those sites.

Steve: Exactly, Michelle. We're going to be touching base on a lot of these subjects in this first episode. Before we go into our first topic, I just want to give you a little gist of who we work for, and the experiences that we've had in the past.

Michelle and I, both work as social media strategists for PlumberSEO, which is an Internet marketing firm based in Miami. We work primarily with Plumbing and HVAC contractors. We take them, we rank them on Google, we build out their websites, do email marketing, social media marketing, video marketing. We pretty much set them into that direction.

I first started my experiences at "Cumulus Radio," in the marketing and promotions department, where I did some radio spots for local businesses in Tallahassee. That's exactly where Cumulus Broadcasting was based in.

From there, I was a content coordinator for Zimmerman Agency, pretty much did content calendars, created creative content. That's actually where I met Michelle, we worked together on some clients.

Michelle: That's right, Steve. I started my social media journey at a motion picture releasing company. We worked for "Indie film campaigns," responding to social media content. There I really got a really good idea of how social media analytics works. From there, I went to Zimmerman where I met Steve.

At Zimmerman, I wrote social media copy and got to see how exactly to create content for major brands that do really well on social media, and generate real returns. It was a bit of a challenge coming to PlumberSEO and working for small businesses, people that have a very specific niche of clientele.

In a lot of ways, I quickly realized that this grass roots engagement is a lot more interesting, and a lot more profitable actually than major social media campaigns, because you're working with real people and you're working with real people in your community, and developing that sense of community and really getting engaged with the right audience.

Now more than ever is the time for plumbers and other small businesses to really get on social media, and take advantage of all the opportunities that you have. Even though it's become much harder for businesses to perform, it's important to stay informed and to really keep up with all of these changes, to make the most out of your presence online.

Steve: We're going to be talking today about the recent update of the news feed algorithm within Facebook which was formerly known as "EdgeRank." As Michelle said before it's very important for you Plumbing and HVAC contractors out there for you to stay up to date with the latest trends in the marketing world.

With this update, it's pretty much going to change the game as far as for your social media presence on your page. The main goal of this update is to show content to users that matter. I pretty much set out forth when we did the research for this on this topic, because it's super important for our clients to be informed and to know about these specific changes.

Michelle: Definitely, Steve. The most recent changes that happened in April are referred to as "Facebook-geddon." This is because it really affects business pages. This is the first thing that we should definitely discuss with you.

Steve: Facebook-geddon.

Michelle: Yes, Facebook-geddon. It sounds very apocalyptic but honestly it's not. I can definitely still take advantage of social media. It actually in some ways might help get to the audience that really matters and weed out all the people that may be in your community but may not need your services.

Steve: That's right. Sorry to cut you off, but the spam is definitely going to be controlled with this update. Am I wrong?

Michelle: Absolutely. A lot of things would be controlled. It would make the user experience on Facebook a lot more pleasant for people. That's ultimately the goal Facebook has because Facebook wants people to remain on Facebook, and it wants to acquire new users that are going to enjoy the experience of Facebook.

The three main changes are, that Facebook is going to allow more posts in a row from a single user. This was a previous problem with EdgeRank where you couldn't make multiple posts in a day and have them show up on a newsfeed back to back. So in a lot of ways this is good for businesses, because people can see your posts again and again.

The two changes that really negatively affect businesses are that Facebook is going to prioritize posts from friends instead of pages on people's newsfeeds. This is huge. In addition to that, Facebook is no longer going to show what friends comment on, which is a huge hit for referral business.

Steve: That actually would be a huge hit for referral business, and these things that actually would probably actually hurt the reach. Am I correct? It would probably hurt the reach significantly.

Michelle: A lot of organic reach is based on friends of friends seeing the posts, because their friends commented on it or interacted with it.

Steve: Exactly.

Michelle: Now, businesses really, really need to rely on shares which takes a lot more energy. People are more weary of sharing a post on our page. You have to be really, really good to do that.

Steve: That is true. I recently was doing some research and I saw that Facebook did a survey. It pretty much stated that people want to see stories from friends, as you were talking about friends sharing post or liking posts or what not.

They wanted to see something that actually is in relation to them, rather than that typical promotional content that you would fish through your feed consistently.

Michelle: Actually, Facebook is going to start hurting brands that are creating promotional content, and pushing out things that are all about their business, and their website.

It's no longer about linking back to your website and just pushing out whatever you can just to be out there. You have to put really some thought and energy into your Facebook post, really try to generate real engagement and actually entertain people. That's where we come in.

Steve: Since I actually started here at PlumberSEO, we've consistently changed the strategy for creative content. Michelle and I, we've worked really hard to try and get the best reach, and the best engagement for our clients. With that said, the strategy has to change. We have to keep up to date with the latest marketing trends.

Michelle: It may seem a little vague at first hearing that you just need to have more engaging content, or more sharable content. What does that actually mean? We've actually broken it down to a science.

In later episodes, we're really going to get in depth about how to create quality posts, and what to do with your Facebook strategy because being compelling really isn't enough anymore. It's creating content that people want to see, but also how to tweak that content to make sure people share it, and people engage with it.

There are subtle things that you can do. "The insights page" is a key. If you are not looking at your insights page, you are not taking advantage of one of the best tools that Facebook offers. It's absolutely free. It allows you to see when your friends are online, what their browsing habits are and how your posts perform.

Steve: As well as what times, what are the best times.

Michelle: The best days and the best times. Just by taking a couple of minutes every week to look at your insights page and really figure out what works, when it works and how it works. You can use that information to create amazing content that is really going to perform really well.

Steve: As you guys are listening in, you Plumbing an HVAC contractors, you're probably wondering, "Wow, this is it going to be a huge threshold to overcome, because it's going to hurt my reach. It's going to hurt my page. No one's going to know my online identity."

Honestly, Facebook is the cornerstone of your identity. It's not simply just a publishing service to post every single day and overwhelm your users with meaningless content. It's more about having quality content rather than quantity.

In October for instance, nearly a billion people visited Facebook pages. Of those visits, more than 750 million people appeared on mobile devices. When you do the numbers, when you think about the numbers there, Facebook pages is a huge online identity.

Michelle: Right, Steve. It's no coincidence that these recent changes are called "Facebook-geddon," just shortly after the mobile-geddon changes, which I'm sure you know about out there.

It's really about making bite size entertaining content that people can see on the go and share on the go. A lot of things that you can do to improve your page performance involve making it shorter and more concise.

There's a lot you can do with that and there are a lot of tips and tricks to really help get into the sort of the idea behind mobile browsing and really understand what mobile content should be about.

Steve: I can't agree with you more there Michelle. I had found something super interesting, and I wanted to pull it from the Facebook conference. Facebook says, "We expect organic distribution, which is organic reach, of an individual's page post to gradually decline overtime, as we continually work to make sure people have a meaningful experience on the site."

With that said, you're probably asking the question, "How do I use Facebook to get people to see my post in the newsfeed?" It's called the, "newsfeed visibility."

This was formally an EdgeRank. Pretty much, it's going to be merging into this newsfeed algorithm, and it comes down to big five categories; interest, post, creator, type and recency.

As for "Interest," it talks about the user, the interest, and the creator. Is the user interested in the page? Or do they like the page? Do their friends like the page?

Next is "Post." Is the post performing well? Does it have high reach? Is it likely to be shown in the newsfeed? Thirdly is the "Creator" amongst other posts. Your competitors. You want to make sure that your posting better content than your competitors.

The next is "Type." Is it a status? Is it a photo? Is it a link? Facebook pretty much has these terms where people are more engaged to "Like a photo" or a "Link," and go see the link rather than just seeing some meaningless status.

The fifth and final one and the most important one is "Recency." How recent is your post? Is it old? Is it old news? If it's new news, then that's probably more likely to get clicked. Now, with social media, everybody's posting something. It has to be recent because if it's not then the person that's being credentialed for that post, it's going to get lost in translation.

Michelle: Exactly, Steve. It all goes back to the rise in the use of mobile technology. When people get on the Facebook app on their phone and start scrolling through the newsfeed, they're not going to look at individual pages.

Steve: No, they're not.

Michelle: They're just going to want to get the best information and the most recent, most popular information at the very top of their feed first. That's what they want. Facebook is really trying to tailor it to individual tastes. It all goes back to getting very personal.

Facebook is about people and they really want to make sure that people enjoy the Facebook experience, especially since Facebook went public.

They know that businesses understand the wealth of opportunity that there is out there on Facebook. They know that businesses will pay for it because they know how profitable Facebook can be for their marketing. Really, these recent changes are encouraging Facebook advertising. That's something that we're definitely going to get really deep into in our future episodes.

Steve: For sure, definitely going to be talking about "paid posts" in our next episode. Organic reach is dying, it's going to continuously die with this newsfeed algorithm update. Don't get scared, these changes will be coming into effect.

They will be a scare to brands, they will be a scare to businesses but just think of it this way, the more likely you have a Facebook page, the more likely you're posting content and engaging your users, the more likely people are going to see you as a friendly plumber to write you a review, or write you a post.

Facebook is a huge pool of people engaging with themselves and conversing about businesses and small businesses, and in reviewing your plumbing contract. We're going to continue to talk about these in the later episodes. We really appreciate you guys listening in. Please subscribe to our podcast, write reviews, it would be great.

This is our first episode, and Michelle and I will be back in the next episode talking about "Facebook paid posts."

Michelle: Thanks everyone.

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