Facebook, the world’s largest social network, made some important changes to how its search function works this week and those changes could be good news for content creators.
In recent years, the company has focused its efforts on providing increasingly sophisticated products for advertisers. As a result, getting organic cut through on Facebook has become more and more difficult for brands and marketers.
A study published last year, for example, revealed that only around two per cent of a brand’s Facebook fans would likely see each organic post, making paid an increasingly important part of any Facebook marketing campaign.
But the visibility of organic posts should get a boost from the revamp to search Facebook rolling out this week.
The company is opening access to all public posts shared by its 1.49 billion users, making it easier for them to get at content that’s been created or shared within the Facebook environment. Facebook is said to have indexed more than 2 trillion pieces of content.
Facebook hopes that people will use this new and improved search offering to track important news stories and follow current events as they unfold around the world. Users already run around 1.5 million searches per day, according to Tom Stocky, Facebook’s vice president of search.
“When something happens in the world, people often turn to Facebook to see how their friends and family are reacting,” Stocky said in a post of Facebook’s blog. “Today, we’re updating Facebook Search so that in addition to friends and family, you can find out what the world is saying about topics that matter to you.”
This move could be bad news for Twitter, which has previously been the place to go for “what’s happening right now” queries.
Twitter has seen growth slow of late and is facing a real challenge attracting new users amid stiff competition not only from Facebook, but also younger social media brands. Last month, for example, Instagram passed 400 million users making it bigger than Twitter for the first time.
But it could be good news for content creators. Facebook’s audience has shown a real demand for engaging, high quality content and that doesn’t need to come from established publishers.
Brands have a real opportunity to use Facebook as a platform for creating, sharing and promoting really great content about topics their audience cares about.
Facebook campaigns still need a boost
Facebook’s index of everything has the potential to improve the visibility of this type of content, but Facebook campaigns still need a little help if you want to get in front of enough of the right people.
If Facebook is going to be part of your marketing plan, then your best chance of success will come from investing in both organic and paid.
Your organic strategy is your opportunity to offer your target audience something useful and engaging that maybe doesn’t push what you sell to hard, or at least not all the time.
If you can create content on Facebook that your target audience is really interested in it can help you get more of the right people introduced to your brand.
If you’re targeting young people, for example, research has shown that creating your own news stories and sharing them social media sites like Facebook can be a really effective hook.
But with more and more Facebook real estate going to paid ads, putting some additional budget behind your best content is likely to remain very necessary, especially if you’ve invested in creating content specifically for Facebook.
Targeted paid campaigns remain the only way to guarantee relevant users will see your content and that is likely to remain the case however popular Facebook’s new search offering becomes.