You have thousands of followers. You post new content every day. And still, you get no engagement. Why is your credit union’s Facebook page so quiet?
Well, there are a couple reasons for that. Let’s take a look at why your Facebook page is dead.
Changes in Credit Union Social Media Marketing
Most digital marketers will tell you that social media presence is a priority for every brand. They’ll say it’s important—that it’s the best way to connect with people and promote your brand. And that may have been true a few years ago.
But things change quickly in the digital marketing realm. New tools hit the scene. New strategies develop. And all too often, companies tweak the way they do business.
That’s what happened with Facebook.
A few years ago, Facebook changed their organic reach algorithms for business pages. (Organic reach is a measurement about how many people can see you on their feed for free.) Before, a business might enjoy organic reach of 15% or more. A few years ago, organic reach was around 2%. Today, that organic reach is well under 1%.
That means that if you have 1,000 followers, only a few will see each post.
Unless you pay.
Why Facebook’s Organic Reach Changed
Why did Facebook change its organic reach algorithms for business pages? Well, it serves two purposes:
First, it keeps peoples’ News Feeds from turning into giant walls of branded content and advertisements.
Second, and more importantly, it comes down to money. They don’t make money from organic reach. They do make money from paid ads.
Your unpaid posts will appear less often in your followers’ News Feeds. Facebook will also track engagement only with people who click your posts. Consequently, you will see much lower numbers in your organic search traffic.
With the current state of organic reach for Facebook pages, most businesses will have a hard time getting noticed at all. No matter how often they post.
So, does that mean that credit union Facebook pages are dead?
Not yet.
How to Increase Facebook Page Engagement
We have a few strategies to increase activity on your credit union’s Facebook page. These are a good first step to optimizing your social media marketing strategy. However, we can’t guarantee that these tips alone will help your page visibility.
(If you want to read more about credit union social media strategy and spending, subscribe to our blog. We’ll be talking a lot more about it in the coming months.)
1. Reassess your goals for Facebook posts
“Engagement” is such a loose term. It actually means very little for most credit unions. Remember that your end goal with Facebook isn’t “likes” or comments. Your goal is to promote specific goods, services, community partners or events, and so on.
If your auto loan posts get a lot of likes—but your campaign isn’t converting—then your social media strategy isn’t working. However, if your posts get only one view—but the viewer takes out an auto loan—then you’re doing it right.
Likes, comments, and especially shares certainly help with vetting and visibility. But keep in mind: Facebook page success and credit union success are not the same thing.
2. Think quality, not quantity
In research I’ve done about credit union social media, I’ve noticed that some credit unions post a lot on Facebook.
And I mean a lot.
But Facebook wants businesses to focus on creating quality content. They actually reward businesses that post around once per day. More posts just add clutter to News Feeds, so Facebook throttles their reach even further.
So, spend more time ensuring that your content quality is high. Spend less time posting several pieces of content per day. Post once per day on your credit union’s Facebook page. Two posts tops.
3. Use content marketing best practices
The trick with inbound marketing (or content marketing) is that you must provide value. Inbound marketing fails if it’s designed primarily to sell rather than educate.
So, make sure your posts on your credit union’s Facebook page provide value. See that your content educates your members.
In a way, this is about knowing your customer. Deliver content that your audience is looking for. They’re not looking for a sales pitch. They’re looking for an informative financial resource.
Keep your content relevant and useful. Save the sales pitches until your members are ready to buy something.
4. Have you tried groups?
Facebook groups are different from Facebook pages. There are many differences between Facebook groups vs pages, but here are some basics:
Facebook pages are better set up for businesses. They represent and are managed by businesses or public entities. Facebook pages provide page and traffic analytics and paid ads features. Unfortunately, they have limited organic reach.
Facebook groups are designed to build communities of people based on interests, geography, profession, and so on. Groups are represented and managed by people within that community. Groups don’t provide analytics or ads, but their organic reach is much better.
Some companies have found success by creating a Facebook group in addition to their page. It’s worth looking into. (We’ll provide an article about this soon.)
5. Find the right time to post (and then be patient)
This sounds so obvious that I almost forgot to include it:
For marketing, not all times of day are created equal. You’ll find a bigger audience during the day than you will at night, for example.
We can’t tell you when exactly to post. You’ll have to track engagement on your credit union’s Facebook page to see when people engage with you. After some research (or trial and error), you should have a better idea about which days are best for posting. Even better, you might learn what time of day to post.
6. Pay to play
This is the unfortunate truth:
You’ll get far more engagement if you pay to promote your posts.
Of course, it might not make sense to promote posts that feature branches, employees, or other random news. But if your post is part of a marketing campaign? If your credit union’s success hinges on proper social media saturation? If you need eyes on an important new piece of inbound content?
Pay Facebook, track ROI.
Additional Reading
Subscribe to our blog if you’d like to learn more about credit union social media. We’ll be posting a lot more content in the coming months that focus on spending, strategy, best practices, and more.
So, if you want to know how credit unions use social media and Facebook pages, we can help. We can also show you how much they’re spending, what they’re spending it on, and which platforms have been the most useful. We will also show how you can use social media tools (like HootSuite and TweetDeck) or marketing automation platforms (like Hubspot and SharpSpring) to manage your social media posting and effort.
Follow the links below if you don’t want to wait for the new stuff to come out.
