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How should we view “our” Facebook communities?
Overland Park, Kan. – April 11, 2018 – Sitting in a meeting the other day, I kept hearing the JNA team discuss how to grow and use “Our Facebook communities.” These are communities that we have watched grow for years. Communities that we have celebrated at every benchmark with drinks and high fives. Unfortunately, the reality of these communities is very clear. These were never ours to own or truly celebrate. These communities have now been fully locked behind a censored gate that is incredibly expensive to pass. Investments must be made, and we have to juke and maneuver as Facebook changes its model and the new facebook community emerges.
The early appeal of Facebook was the ability to build strong communities of fans and then maintain contact using published content. Advertisers saw an opportunity to invest in developing these communities and then achieve engagement at great scale. Now that Facebook has made organic reach nearly impossible, we have to view these communities similar to direct mail campaigns in an offline neighborhood. A neighborhood where we can’t just stick a sign on the corner and expect everyone walking or driving by to notice the message. In order to reach interested consumers that have moved into a community surrounding our brand, we will have to invest in reaching them one-by-one with strong messages. These messages will be put in their feed similar to us tossing a flier into their mailbox and we have to hope our message breaks through among all the other junk, propaganda and clutter.
As we prepare for the future of Facebook we have to become better media planners and marketing strategists. Our content has to be high-quality and meaningful to these individuals more often. Most of all, we have to look to add sincere value to our audience’s lives and invest in the best kind of content to have sustained success. It will be very hard to “earn” anything on social media moving forward. We, the marketing professionals and brands, will have to look at social platforms as straightforward paid channels with individuals (community members) who have shown more past interest than others. The idea that we own a community is nothing but a mirage. However, we do know that these “communities” are still some of the best homes to send our marketing to because they have true incremental value if we can deliver great content.
As Facebook faces one of its toughest challenges in its fight to balance business and community, we have to look forward as marketers. Their business, like ours, will be better if they serve people in the best way possible. We must push forward with well-thought-out strategies, tailored media investments and focused content. JNA welcomes this challenge and will continue to study and understand the best way to respond.
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Written by Jordan Garcia, President
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