Members of the business community who have used Facebook as one of their marketing platforms were jolted by the post of Facebook’s co-founder, CEO, and Chairman, Mark Zuckerberg. To paraphrase, Facebook is about to initiate some changes in its focus which can have a significant impact on those organizations and groups that have used the social media platform as a marketing tool. More meaningful social interactions are now the name of the game; no longer relevant content created by clever viral post makers.

The takeaway message is quite simple: business organizations must not depend on a single online platform, be it social media, advertising, or otherwise, to drive lead generation. Facebook started out as a means of connecting people in an online platform. Because of this growing connection of individuals, the platform became the preferred vehicle for many businesses to connect to and with their target audience. So many big brands created faux social fronts and play acted with all of us by creating albeit engaging but fake social content to drive brand awareness and even clicks and sales.

Unfortunately, over time this has lead to a reduction in meaningful social interactions. What happened in most cases is that products and services were shoved right into the lives of people who were on Facebook to connect with others and not necessarily to buy something. Companies with big budgets for viral post development that were disguised as social interaction but were in fact “free” advertising were dominating our feeds. Our friends and family and “meaningful” connection were just getting lost in the sea of marketing content.

Facebook set out to be a place for meaningful personal interactions. This principal objective of Facebook has somehow been neglected as the platform has gotten wholesaled by big business.

It now looks like Facebook took cognizance of this and has taken up a stand to draw the line to separate those that are using Facebook for its primary intended purposes from those who are only using it to advance their own economic aims.

Business organizations need to rethink their Facebook strategy. It was never Ok to assume the posting to a fan page with thousands of likes would be a “marketing strategy.” So if this was you -- things just got really hard. Now you have to be a legit marketer and advertiser to get reach and get in front of people with relevant ads that drive leads and sales.

Shifting your focus from content-grind models should help you steer your organization in the right direction especially in the face of Facebook’s looming, industry-sweeping changes. Now is the time to focus on creating more meaningful social interactions with anyone on Facebook and to realize that if you want that traffic and access to the data you have to advertise.

Which we think is great. This is the biggest blessing of 2018. Now small and medium sized companies will have a fair playing field if they are willing to take a professional approach to advertising and creating content. As a digital marketing agency for many clients with limited resources this just cleared the field and opened up the game.

And yes this is good for Facebook’s bottom line. They basically just carved out “free” advertising and are forcing businesses to pay if they want reach. The good news is if you know what you are doing with audiences, ad creative & re-targeting then you have the chance to really improve your results.

So what do we do now? Create great ads, refine and evaluate our audience selection, make sure our targeting is spot on and test, test, test.

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