6 Hacks to Survive “Facebook Zero”

Okay, it’s no secret that HUGE changes are underway with the Facebook News Feed and it’s important to adjust your strategy. Many are calling it the “Facebook Fumble” or “Facebook Zero”.

On Jan. 24, 2018, I sent a comprehensive analysis of the coming changes to the Facebook News Feed.

At ConvertSource, we want to help you understand what’s happening and how to revamp your strategies so that Facebook will continue to be a viable marketing channel. Yes, believe it or not, there are several digital elements that you can begin implementing into your strategy to help you from getting left behind. And no, not all 6 deal with Facebook Ads!

Here’s a quick summary of what’s going to change:

1. Less public content will be shown
   • This is referring to videos and posts from publishers or businesses. For example, let’s say that you’re a local ice cream shop and you just got a new flavor & you wanted to take a cool slow-mo video while scooping the ice cream into a dish, your content (because you’re posting organic business content) will continue to be seen by LESS of your audience.
2. Reach, video watch time, and referral traffic from Pages will decrease.
   • Speaking of organic content, this new News Feed shift will start to really crack down on video watch time unless you have money behind the content a.k.a Facebook Ads.
3. Posts will be ranked differently, giving priority to “posts that spark conversations and meaningful interactions between people,” according to Facebook.
   • Here we have to start to be careful of how we pose our content. It’s a little bit a catch 22. A marketer’s first instinct when they read #3 would be to start posting their content with questions. However, Facebook’s new algorithm (A.K.A. Facebook Zero) will tend to look at that as “baiting” the audience. So, may suggestion is to focus on your post creative (video or image) to make it very unique visually to spark interest. My second suggestion would be to focus on your blog/content post headline. If you’re a blogger/content marketer, this may be no sweat for you, however, for those who are a bit newer to this element, a strong & provocative post headline will help increase clicks and interest.

If you’d like to super-charge your headlines, there are sources available to help with their creation, however, the #1 source I would recommend is Funnel Scripts by Click Funnels.

Here are six things you can do now to improve your chances with Facebook:

1. Post less frequently (I know that’s gonna be hard, but it’s necessary).
2. Create content that stimulates conversation–meaning comments between fans.
3. Jump into live video, now! Why? It leads to 6x the interactions according to Facebook.
4. Don’t ask for comments in your posts. Engagement bait will be demoted in the News Feed. (Remember what I suggested above about your post creative & headlines.)
5. Master Facebook ads. This will be the only sure-fire way to drive people to your site. It has been said that Facebook is just trying to force any business to “pay the toll” to be on Facebook to survive. However true or false that may be, if you want to succeed on Facebook, you need to become proficient at Ads. Related Resource(s): Facebook Marketing Excellence: The Secrets to Put Your Leads & Sales on Autopilot.
6. Learn Messenger Chatbots. Bots will allow you to nurture leads and sell.

This will likely require a shift in your Facebook marketing strategy. And you’ll probably have to learn some new tools to carry it out (like bots, ads, or live video). BUT as it has been said time & time again, your Online Marketing journey will never be complete. At least now, you have 6 hacks for getting your brand back in the swing of things.