Is Facebook no longer a valuable tool for marketing your photography business?
Whether you’re just getting started or someone far along, you’re most likely using Facebook as one of your online tools for promoting your photography business. With Facebook’s recent announcement regarding changes on the News Feed, there’s been a lot of buzz about the repercussions these changes will bring to brands and businesses. If you’re wondering if and how this will affect you as a photographer, you might want to see what Bryan Caporicci of Sprout Studio has to say about it.
In a recent Facebook live video, Bryan discussed the concern of brands and businesses over the changes Facebook plans to roll out soon, beginning with the News Feed. Coming straight from the big boss Mark Zuckerberg himself, they’re working on a transition to make the social platform more focused on “meaningful social interactions”.
Now, if you’ve got around an hour to listen to Bryan’s thoughts about the “Facebook apocalypse” for businesses, go ahead and watch his video here. Otherwise, we’ve plucked some of the important details for you. Let’s begin with that bit from Zuckerberg’s announcement about “meaningful social interactions” and how the Facebook team will be making it happen:
I’m changing the goal I give our product teams from focusing on helping you find relevant content to helping you have more meaningful social interactions.
We started making changes in this direction last year, but it will take months for this new focus to make its way through all our products. The first changes you’ll see will be in News Feed, where you can expect to see more from your friends, family and groups.
As we roll this out, you’ll see less public content like posts from businesses, brands, and media. And the public content you see more will be held to the same standard — it should encourage meaningful interactions between people.
To shed more light on this, Facebook posted a newsroom article with a video explaining how the update will embody their goal to bring people closer to each other. In a nutshell, they will be ranking person-to-person interactions higher than person-to-page. There will also be a focus on people’s comments on each others’ posts instead of just likes. Furthermore, engagement bait posts – those with a certain call-to-action such as “LIKE this,” “SHARE this,” or “TAG friends” – will be shown less in the News Feed.
This means the News Feed will put priority on displaying posts from people and those they are actively interacting with. Also, Bryan has noted that both personal and business accounts will be put under the same level of scrutiny with regard to their content and engagement.
The keyword to this big change is MEANINGFUL. Facebook has realized that we’re more likely to stay glued to the platform if we’re engaged with something relevant to us. And the word relevant often points to something or someone we are personally connected with.
On a final note, the only way for businesses (specifically photographers) to adapt to this change is to encourage meaningful discussion around their work. Bryan has some suggestions worth trying out. Build or join a community of people around a shared mindset related to your work. Engage clients and their friends with a personal touch when you share your images in a post. Don’t increase the frequency your posts: keep in mind that now, more than ever, it’s about QUALITY, not QUANTITY.
