Everyone knows how difficult it is to get eyeballs on your social media. And if you ask any small business owner, they'll probably tell you how much they struggle with promoting their brand on all the different channels.
Even if they hire a "social media manager" to manage socials for them, it can still seem like they're fighting an uphill battle to get the leads their business needs to grow.
If this is you... I completely understand your frustration.
It's even worse for new businesses that are just getting started on socials. I recently started a page on X, and it's been a nightmare. First, I had to prove I wasn't a bot. And even after I went through the whole verification process, my account still got flagged when it grew too quickly.
And I've seen loss of reach from my established accounts, too. I'm getting a tenth of the reach that I used to.
What gives?
I think we're dealing with two big issues here.
The first issue is paid ads. We've all been getting less and less reach for the past decade. Social media companies want to improve their bottom line - so they give more space to paid ads, while reducing organic content.
And it's really easy to blame those corporate greedy bastards, right?
If half the posts I'm seeing on their platforms are ads, aren't the ads responsible for the abysmal reach on my organic posts?
Sure, but there's a bigger problem that no one is talking about.
No one talks about the amount of people using A.I. write social media posts.
Remember before Chat GPT - if you wanted content for your business, you'd either have to write it yourself or you'd have to pay someone to write it for you.
Not anymore.
Now you can post 15 times a day with very little effort on your part. You can even get your assistant to set up all your posts for you. It's very easy to become a content producing machine.
So is the obvious answer to get A.I. to write all of your social media posts?
No, that'll make you part of the problem. You'll just be another person clogging up the feed with all the generic A.I. content that you're trying to push out.
It'll blend in perfectly with all the other A.I. content out there.
Of course, some people will see it because the algorithms have to determine if it's a good post or not.
But you're not going to get much engagement with A.I. content. And once the algorithm determines that it's a low value post, it'll drop it right into no man's land.
And if you use A.I. the algorithm is going to punish you.
When I originally published this story, a lot of people were upset about algorithms dropping their reach significantly in a very short span of time. At the time, nobody knew what was going on.
Now we do.
Social media algorithms have been trained to reduce A.I. content on all the different platforms. So if you're posting the same material that you were a year ago, that's the reason your reach is down.
A.I. is punishing value posts, and posts where previous content has been recycled. So you can't take an old post from three months ago, and use it again. And you shouldn't try to create a value post with information that can commonly be found online.
Instead, you should post about your own experiences. These are the types of posts that are getting picked up by the algorithms now.
Now for the solution...
Here's what I would do if I wanted to grow on a social media platform.
First, I'd have a quality over quantity mindset. It's better to post quality content once a week, than write a mediocre post with ChatGPT everyday.
I'd also write mostly about my own experiences in my small business.
Give people a taste of what it's like to be you... to have your knowledge and experience. They want to see what's happening through your eyes.
Maybe you won't have a story for them every single day. But you should be able to post at least once a week if you're working everyday in your field, right?
But how will people see your content if you don't post all the time?
I'm so surprised people don't talk about this more often, but you can pay for impressions.
Just pay for them? Why not?
Think about how much money you make per hour. Now think about how much it would cost to pay for 1,000 impressions on social media...
You're probably losing money by writing social media content. If you make $50 an hour doing whatever you do, and it costs $5 for 1,000 impressions on Facebook.
Why would you spend 30 minutes writing a new post everyday, when you could just spend $5 and get 1,000 more impressions on a post that you already know performs well?
How do you get those high performing posts/ads?
Well, you can write them yourself... And for most businesses that's a solid idea. After all, no one knows your business better than you.
And because you have valuable experience in your industry, you probably have a voice and opinions that matter to the people you're trying to reach.
But writing can be difficult for a lot of people. Some people don't like to write. And some people are bad at writing, or bad at writing persuasively.
And for those people, I recommend hiring a marketer like myself to take care of your posts.
A marketer should be able to get the most views from every post, plus they might even be able to help you convert people that view your posts.
Remember - our ultimate goal is getting the people from social media onto your email list. And then you just have to sell to your list.
Social media should never be the beginning, middle, and end of your sales funnel.
You should also be working on your other assets as well. Having a great website, and a list are equally important for small business owners.
If you'd like for me to help you build awareness for your brand, or catch more leads... send me a quick message at diana@rainmakersunited.com and we can talk about how I might be able to help.
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Diana