Facebook and Twitter: What’s working and what’s not for 2020

Fanslike Agency created the #SwanseaIsCulture campaign in 2017 when Facebook had twice the reach to audiences than it does now in 2020.

The landscape around social media is definitely changing. We work on the frontline of social media and below your will read our findings about what’s working and what’s not.

And we’ve seen some super interesting changes on some of the channels. Below I’ve shared my two insights for Facebook and Twitter for the coming year.

Facebook Business pages seem to be stuck in a rut.  Yes you can boost out to your followers and you can send targeted ads but it’s costing more and more money to do so - on a daily basis for small creators and businesses it can become a drain on resources to get your posts delivered to your followers on a daily basis.

Since 2015 we’ve been running ads on Facebook and they previously proved to be excellently cost efficient and effective – you could find new followers for your page for as little as 25p. Most importantly once you got the follower, these were real people. Creative posts would get a good proportion of engagement with the new followers who would start talking to you on the page.

And then the price of the ads went up and up and up as more and more brands started using them (big marketing budgets from Adidas, Nike etc). You’d be lucky to get a new follower for a £1. And more importantly you’ll probably never hear from this follower in the years that follow. That’s because with so many ads going out on Facebook, the algorithm is set so high - if someone didn’t hover over that first post on your Business Facebook page, then that person will probably never see another post from that business page in their feed again. A way to test this is to take a look at the pages you follow – you’ll be stunned at how many you follow and how you’ve never seen any of the posts.

Facebook Business pages might as well be publishing to brick walls, the engagement and reach is terrible and sometimes it’s just not worth anyone’s while.

I also wonder who these ads are being delivered to. If you go through your personal feed on Facebook there just aren’t that many ads in your personal feed (which would be annoying right? You’d probably want to leave Facebook) – so I reckon Facebook aren’t delivering them to anyone real – they are using bots.

However, we do still all need a Facebook Business page. It’s like the website of social media. It’s your window to your business and brand.

What do you need to compensate? You need a Facebook Group. This is the small marvel developing for brands and can work by supporting your Facebook page. It’s organic and has a great reach to your audience or customer. People really do share content on Facebook Groups and this is where content can be generated to drive your campaign.

Facebook groups are always active and their members are constantly contributing to discussions and raising new topics – this is engagement like the good old days!

New marketing strategies are required to create interesting Facebook groups – brands are going to have to work out how to find new members and they need to be careful how they speak to the group without losing the member’s loyalty to the group. Influencers can be useful to help find members of the groups but the main strategy will be around THE FAN – the fan of the movie, the fan of the sunglasses or the fan of the car – the fans who make up the members of these groups who share content and comment and engage.

Brands might be able to enter groups but admins are going to need to be careful not to annoy the members, even if they enter the group with offers for the fans.

And there’s a surprising little gem emerging for the creative digital space – It’s twitter. More and more posts are supported with images – blog URL pasting links and uploaded visuals are making twitter posts more eye catching. Twitter is becoming a visual social media platform with no REACH restriction like Facebook Business – what goes out flies out. For me, Twitter is becoming a much quicker and effective way to engage an audience with no costs on ‘boosting’ to get to your people.

And if you do run a Twitter ad, they work better than Facebook and reach real people who will, I guarantee, become active in your fan base.

We believe that 2020 will be the year of the Facebook Group and Twitter for anyone running a creative campaign.

Blog by Miranda Fleming, Director of Campaigns, Fanslike Agency

Facebook Launches Exciting New Features

Happy Women’s History Month!

At Fanslike Agency, we are so thrilled to currently be working with incredible female innovators, such as director Marina Shron and musician January Thompson.

To celebrate, we wanted to share our latest Tips & Tricks feature with you, including updates on Facebook’s new functions.

Following Snapchat and Instagram’s popular ‘Black History Month’ stickers, Facebook has created new visual tools to celebrate ‘Women's History Month’ this March. However, to access them, you have to use Facebook Stories.

Stories features in general have seen rapid growth in usage, even on Facebook (which lags far behind Instagram and Snapchat in this area). Still, it’s a great way to show solidarity for a wonderful cause, and help boost users interest in your pages!

We also wanted to let you know that you can now share events on Facebook Stories!

While usage is still relatively low on Facebook Stories compared to other platforms, their new event sharing feature could change that. Now when people visit a Facebook event page, they will see a Share to Your Story option, enabling them to share information about the event via Stories. They’ve also added tappable stickers on Stories, which provide event details and links without leaving the story. Facebook still totally dominates other platforms through its event pages. Making this information shareable via their Stories feature could be the edge they need to regain the attention of Snapchat and Instagram users.

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Fan Engagement: The New Way to Create Effective Digital Marketing

Content is king. Narrative is Queen. Together they rule your fan engagement.

For creative industries - film, TV, Podcasts, Games, publishing (anything aside from sport!) - fan and audience engagement is a combination of creating writing, photography and/or filming, placed on digital channels and in turn provokes funny, slick, sad, emotional and/or satirical feelings – it’s that THING which makes people react with a HEART, a RAINBOW or PUKE emoji. Bottom line is that you don’t require large budgets to engage your audience online.

The creative writing needs to ooze the brand. If you are a comedy then make people laugh with your writing on EVERY post – people are checking in because of the writing – so make sure it’s doing it’s thing on social just like it is in the script.

And if it’s a visual product like photography or short or feature films – your pages should be high design and stunning.

You need to engage your audience and fans on all levels, even the most basic: Eg. when there’s a considered comment on a post you should LIKE or COMMENT on the post – get the conversation going with your people.

The ‘engagement’ of your audience and fan is primarily through original and bold content and if you are using Facebook and Instagram ads, your ROI will reap exceptionally better returns – our campaigns show at least 50% better conversion rates than the published stats by Facebook.

Some people don’t even know they are a ‘fan’ – it’s fantastic to see campaigns develop and watching people, for the first time, starting to react and click on a regular basis, sometimes weekly and sometimes daily. They have become fans before they know it!

How do we create better return for client’s money on ads using fan engagement?

Creating strong content (film, writing and photography) coupled with re-targeting to fans via custom audiences gives you the best option for return on your investment (ROI) of the ad budget.

How do you make a custom audience?

Facebook and Instagram tracks your audience from day 1 using your Facebook pixel. If you strategically place content early on in the campaign/launch of your social channels (say a trailer or clip), Facebook/Instagram will track the people who watched that content for at least 50% of the clip/film’s duration. It’s these people that will make up your custom audience and the new ads will be only targeted at them (making the ad campaign more efficient and cost effective). On these audiences, you can then create look a like audiences which will widen the social reach of your ad effectively.

Putting the two together – ad strategy (custom audiences) and content (the king and queen)  – you will see your ROI rise significantly.

Check out our social media management packages HERE

Our Campaigns are HERE

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E-mail me directly if you’d like to discuss a fan engagement campaign for your business Miranda@fanslikeagency.com