3 steps to nail your Facebook content strategy for 2020

There is a high probability that each and one of us consumes daily at least a few pieces of content, whether we are aware of this or not. People have specific pages that they like to follow for various reasons. It could be the in-depth analysis of an issue, or maybe because they are entertaining, short and to the point, or helpful. Whichever option is valid when it comes to what kind of content we like to digest.

What becomes more and more difficult instead is how to attract and engage your audience on your social channels. We are aware that competition is fierce in the virtual world and brands need to differentiate and position themselves. This is why we want to give a hand with what to take into account for 2020 when preparing your content strategy, which should be integrated into a content marketing strategy. One of the main social media channels that everyone should look out for is Facebook, since in the last quarter of 2019 it has 2.41 billion monthly active users.

Content is still the king in 2020

There is absolutely no surprise that content is still the king even in 2020. Looking from the perspective of B2B companies, 93% of them use content marketing, but another survey shows that 72% of people say their organization is challenged with managing their content strategically.

This can be correlated with Content Marketing Institute’s findings in which 68% of tech content marketers acknowledged that creating content that appeals to multiple roles is their top challenge. We can conclude from here that businesses are aware of the value content brings and they invest resources to produce. The difficult aspect here is to establish an optimal workflow in order to craft content well-timed and that appeals to more audiences. From what we have noticed, companies still have a long way to go to reach this point. The positive aspect here is that 75% say their organization’s content marketing is more successful compared with its performance a year ago. Therefore in time, through testing and adapting, companies learn how to put out there more relevant pieces of information.

To ease up the efforts of B2B companies, we need to switch the point of view so that we can understand what kind of content users enjoy to consume. Buffer did a great summary after analyzing 777 million posts on Facebook. The key takeaways are:

• Video format content performs better than all other types of Facebook posts (59% more engagement);
• The most common reactions to top Facebook video posts are LOVE and HAHA;
• Inspirational, funny, and practical content generates the most engagement.

Out of all the content, it is not that surprising to learn that videos earn the highest rate of engagement. What companies need to be mindful of instead is that even though the quantity of content is growing on Facebook, the demand from consumer’s side remains the same, because there’s only so much a person can consume, process and share daily.

That is why Facebook’s algorithms have changed. The platform now provides only the most relevant content to each user. In order to increase engagement and optimize user experience, the content shown is tailored to each user’s individual interests. This is the reason behind why posts from companies appear more rare in the newsfeed.

The secret to gaining traction to your page is through organic reach. A company needs to create content that engages the online audiences to comment, share and react to its posts.

This raises the organic reach and therefore, Facebook’s algorithm concludes that the content is spread-worthy since many people engage with it.

Consumer’s perspective

Valuable insights were drawn from the extensive study Hubspot performed in U.S. related to How Consumers Want to Engage with Brands on Social Media. When looking at the results about Facebook, we learn that:

• People use it especially in order to communicate easily with loved ones and discover interesting information/content, watch videos, find information/ideas related to personal interests;
• Pushing people to outside websites or landing pages is not advised;
• Facebook also broadly performs well and is effective at encouraging consumers to communicate with a brand (e.g., direct messaging, viewing and liking content, providing email information) and to advocate on a brand’s behalf;
• Consumers exhibit a high propensity to block brand content, making it critical for companies to produce the right content for this channel;
• Brand advocacy behavior is a strength for Facebook, because users are more likely to share content, tag friends to posts, talk about content, write a review, geotag, message with a brand, and write reviews;
• People want educational content, news and current events to see on Facebook;
• The most high-performing types of content are Hobbies/interests and Sympathetic. Info/Utility content (Educational, News/current events) results in the lowest performance.

These kind of research offers companies the necessary insights about their audiences in the long-term. With this information, you start to understand what are the main topics for your content that you should approach. Take also note of some of the expected trends for 2020 in content as well, mainly: personalization based on interests and improved targeting, visual-heavy social media, VR, AI, and interactive content, ephemeral stories and video consumerism just to name a few trends that will continue into 2020 as well.

3 steps to nail your Facebook content strategy for 2020

We already wrote an article on how to create a content strategy for B2B businesses, but considering that we are approaching 2020 and many already have a company Facebook account in place, let’s cut the chase and jump right into the 3 steps:

1. Audit & survey your landscape

This step applies especially if the company already has a Facebook page that is being managed. But even if you don’t own one yet, surveying the landscape of your industry still provides useful insights into what information is distributed, how audiences react to each piece of content and what are the visual standards. This helps you understand what is the norm, where can your brand stand out and grab the attention of people.

Did you notice any trends in your field? What kind of content people from your audience share in general? Differentiation comes from the way we write, how visual materials look like, what kind of content is being distributed. Review your posts over the last quarters. See which posts got the most traffic, as well as the most shares and other engagement. Document this information and try to make an educated guess why those posts spiked.

Also, in order to brainstorm ideas of content for 2020, you need to ask yourself the questions:

• Where are we now?
• Where do we want to get to?
• How do we get there?
• How do we know when we’ve got there?

Reset your goals and objectives for 2020 more accurately now that you also have insights about how your content performed across one year.

2. Reassess the audiences

After you established what kind of vibe the Facebook page gives you in terms of information, tone of voice and brand personality and what works best and what you should drop for now from your strategy, reassess your audiences. The best option is to actually discuss with people from your target and find out what they want to see from your company’s page. Afterwards, segment the audience and map out what content should you deliver for each. Needless to say, each type of audience consumes different content. Therefore, you need to match the content with the actual audience.

3. Choose the types of content

Here you should become more specific and also document the viable ideas. What kind of content will you use, what audience it serves, what outcome do you want for each and what call-to-action should you include to trigger the outcome. Also, it is ideal to specify how the visual should look or what kind of feeling it elicits, giving examples from other brands as a point of reference. Vary formats and ways of delivering. Have dedicated people that work exactly for this goal.

There is also a twist to all of this:

“It’s good to remember that engagement is the goal, not necessarily quantity. Rather than increasing the volume of your Facebook posts to try and get more reach and engagement. Instead, publish fewer posts and focus on the ROI of each individual post. My recommended content type ratio for 2019 is 70% video posts, 20% image posts and 10% link posts. Video and image posts can still include links and CTAs.” (Mari Smith, Facebook Marketing Expert)

Hard to swallow pills

• Keep your posts short (under 50 characters ideally, because attention span is short and text is hard to digest);
• Involve yourself in relevant Facebook groups, create content adequate for each one and offer helpful inputs (groups will become more important than company pages);
• Publish less and publish well. Here we are talking about highly qualitative content (high-quality pictures, templates brand aligned with the company’s identity, insightful and actionable know-how industry);
• Don’t shy away from experimenting with the posting hours, including the ones from the evening or early in the morning;
• Video is the strongest and most desired type of content, therefore experiment and allocate resources to explore such a direction;
• Test out the assumption that posts published on Thursday and Friday receive the highest engagement;
• The content strategy needs to be coupled with other tools for tracking progress, therefore consider investing in a professional marketing monitoring and reporting app.

Final thoughts

Keep in mind that your Facebook content needs to be fully integrated with your overall marketing strategy. It needs to be an extension of your plan and support the business goals, while also putting at the heart of all your content your audience’s information needs. Our team of senior consultants can help you with creating such a comprehensive strategy. Let’s get in touch and discuss what are your 2020’s plans.