Profile Vs Page: Using The Facebook Algorithm Against Itself

Ever since social media hit the market people went crazy. "This is a game changer", "This will change business forever" ... and for the most part, it has. People suddenly could reach millions of their fans with a click of a button. Just publish a post and BOOM! You suddenly have a major fan base, that is exposed to your ads, free of charge.

And then came pages...That's when everything really changed. Suddenly business had to open this new thing called a page (as opposed to a regular profile) and had to gain likes to reach people. So far so good right? Until the stats came in, pages only reach about 10% (an optimistic number) of those who actually liked the page. Facebook started limiting the reach of pages and their connection to fans (unless they paid off course). 

Funnily enough, despite this distinction, people with personal profiles found their posts getting likes and comments in the hundreds while pages rarely got 10 organically. From a business perspective, this makes sense right? You want your business to reach more people, you gotta pay up. The more you pay the more you reach.

This trend is not just limited to Facebook though. Instagram introduced the "Business Profile" in order to follow the same tactic, and LinkedIn has profiles and company pages. The trend is the same across all of these channels. The moment you start publishing from a business page, your reach is automatically limited by design

So how do you bypass this bottleneck?

Simple you use the social algorithm against itself. As a business owner you already know your target market and where are they located. Generally speaking, people are friends with people similar to themselves. This means that most people within their circles are probably an in-market audience. That is why it is in your best interest as a business to have them post content on their own pages and tag you and not the other way around. Below is a list of ways to get people to do just that.

Competitions, Competitions and did I mention Competitions?

One thing I have noticed repeatedly across our entire customer base and their respective social channels are the effectiveness of competitions. People love to take part in competitions even if the prize is small and simple. The thrill isn't in what you win, it's in the attempt to win. Subconsciously we all love free stuff, but what we love more is the attempt at winning stuff. Here is an experiment talked about in my favorite book, The Power of Habit. 

When exploring the mind of gamblers, we find that the mental response generated by a "win" or a "near-win" is exactly the same. This tells us that we subconsciously react in the same manner, pushing us to repeat the action even if we don't win. That is why gamblers can't quit because deep down the rush of almost winning is winning itself.

Competitions act as a major trigger for such a response. The moment we see a competition that we have the slightest chance of winning and see ourselves coming close to winning we feel like we already won. The thrill will keep us hooked.

Influencers

Each industry has its followers. People who have amassed a major following on social media. The reason they are so effective is a two part answer. The nature of an influencer is someone people trust and adore. People would visit their profiles to see any updates they might have missed. These are the celebrities of the new age so it goes without saying that people follow them almost obsessively.

The second part of the answer lies in the technical aspect of their work. Influencers are people with profiles, not pages. This means that their posts have a far wider reach and impact than a regular page post. Better yet, we have found that influencer posts have a wider reach than sponsored posts even. They also tend to have better brand recall than ads. People always remember where person X was dining or what person Y was wearing. 

Our research on the above is what led us to curate a major database of influencers that have managed to improve the sales of our clients. Some even saw improvements of up to 70%! It's time that you got in on the action too.