Make the algorithm work for your business

Thanks to your incredible support (with over 1,400 subscribers!) and demand for more content, we are now launching two newsletter issues per month.?

In our most recent newsletter, we explored how and why businesses are using WhatsApp as marketing software. If you haven’t checked it out yet, you can catch up right here.?

As for today, we’re going to shift our focus and talk about two social media apps widely used by businesses nowadays (and you guessed it): Facebook and Instagram.?

How are businesses using FB and IG to market their brands to unique audiences, and most importantly, what tricks do they have up their sleeves to convert those audiences into loyal customers??

Follow along because, as always, SleekFlow’s got you covered.?

How to thrive in the Algorithm Era

Remember the good old days when we would open our Facebook or Instagram feed to scroll from our friends’ newest posts to their oldest posts??

Unfortunately for some of us who preferred that, we know that this is no longer the case now.?

Ever since the switch to algorithm-based feeds, social media platforms have been sorting out the sequence of posts and prioritizing what they think is most relevant to least relevant to users. The goal is to match users to the content they are most likely interested in, hoping they’ll spend more time on the platform. As a result, they can provide a better user experience aka it’s goood for business.?

That’s why the success of your business' Facebook and Instagram marketing campaigns depends on how well you can work their algorithms.?

To make it easy for you, we’ve summarized some high-performing content types that are favored by the Facebook and Instagram algorithms here:??

Generally, make sure that your caption is concise (i.e. research shows that <25 characters on IG post caption is optimal), informative, and adds value to your brand. Just as your friends regularly share updates about their lives and interests on social media, let your customers know your brand story so that they can build an authentic connection and support your products or services, aka it’s also goood for your business.?

4 Facebook and Instagram strategies to market your business without add-on costs

Here’s an outline of some free practices as a rule of thumb in Facebook and Instagram marketing.?

1. Get to know your audience?

There are many factors determining your post visibility under Facebook and Instagram’s algorithm, including engagement, impressions, conversion rates, click-through rates, etc. How well you interact with your audience boosts engagement, which helps your content move further up that news feed. You can start by replying to your customers’ DMs as soon as you see one or responding to their comments will go a long way. If your team cannot handle this kind of workload to respond to every direct message or comment meaningfully, SleekFlow can help as an all-in-one messaging platform (more on that later).?

2. Maximize all content forms

What kind of content grabs your attention while scrolling the newsfeed page quickly? It could be video (which drives the highest engagement out of all content types) or an engaging infographic carousel, regardless of why it was eye-catching and include those elements when creating content.

In fact, video drives 2x engagement compared to single photo or carousel posts on Instagram. The platform’s Explore function also prioritizes almost entirely on new accounts and whether users Like, Comment, or Share the content, so make good use of stickers, stories, and reposting content from other accounts, to capture their attention and prepare your account to eventually conversions.??

Interested in creating videos to engage your customers? Here are 6 video marketing tips to get you started.?

3. Establish a routine and consistency?

Your followers want to hear from you. If they discover you through either of these channels, your online presence defines their opinion of your brand. So seize the opportunities to interact with them by posting regularly Create a content calendar, then plan out the ways you will populate your active channels, then schedule posts (at high traffic times) in advance to avoid them getting in the way of your daily workflow.?

4. Give your strategy time to show results and evaluate periodically

It might do you more harm than good if you do test out too many types of content within a short period of time. It will become more challenging for analytics tools to identify which ad variables correlate with higher views, so if you want reliable and actionable insights you should stick with one strategy before experimenting with another one.?

How SleekFlow helps you unlock automated comment reply on Facebook and Instagram

This feature is one of the most cost-effective, and perhaps most overlooked, strategies you can make without having to spend a fortune on running paid ads. Responding to comments manually is an extremely time-consuming task that very few businesses are willing to take up. However, customers feel a personal connection when businesses take that extra step to interact with them on a person-to-person level.?

With SleekFlow, you can set up highly personalised auto reply settings on direct messages and comments. For instance, you run a business that sells baked goods. You decide to promote your products with a giveaway promotion and invite followers to leave a comment that demonstrates their participation.?

SleekFlow will help you by:

• Automatically triggering a direct message or comment (whichever way they interacted with you) to thank them for their participation
• Collecting available info on the user, segmenting them, and integrating them with the rest of your social messaging data to inform your follow-up actions, i.e. remarketing, new product promotion, personalized birthday messages
• BONUS (hey, it's free!): Integrate Facebook Lead Ads and save your customers' time filling up forms since the customer database across all social apps is seamlessly integrated on SleekFlow's unified platform

Find out more about how comment auto reply on Facebook and Instagram works with SleekFlow and grow your business now.?

But wait, there’s more. In addition to automated comment replies on Facebook and Instagram, we also have other automation features to equip you with a comprehensive set of marketing tools, including:?

• Chatbots?
• Personalized greeting messages?
• Scheduled promotional messages?
• Drip campaigns?
• Booking reminders?
• Customer segmentation

You can also reach out to us for a free consultation and analysis of your messaging strategy here.?

Until next time

Thank you for joining us, and we hope you learned something new! Let us know in the comments below about your thoughts on potential topics or content to cover for our next Newsletter.?

Last but not least, don’t forget to subscribe to our Newsletter. See you here in two weeks!?