If you have been working as a social media manager especially on Facebook from 2012 onwards you will agree with me if I say it was a golden period right until 2017.
It was crazy seriously. Everything went viral, reach was great, facebook was not strict and even if anyone had a 100k page only he was able to earn something from it.
Who remembers the viral content creators like WittyFeed, Little things, Provider(Cheaters still owe me around 10k), Inspiremore, Brightside, Bored Panda, and Diply only to name a few.
WittyFeed could also be regarded as shittyfeed. They created a lot of spam and fake content in their days. That’s why you can’t find them anymore.
In those days content researchers will find just any story which got a viral response from any competitor and then shares it on their site without really worrying about the content authenticity of the nature of the content.
And it went viral all the time.
But anyways the above companies and many other similar sites made crazy money in those days, we also had a great run too and I can say I was there, I saw it happen and it was absolutely crazy in those years.
That caused the abuse of facebook’s platform on a massive scale and rightly so facebook had to clamp down hard and they really did.
100s of pages were getting deleted regularly. And it especially changed in my opinion with the introduction of artificial intelligence.
Although they must have been working on it for years its results started to come in 2017 afterwards.
Table of Contents
Changes In Then & Now
Facebook was pretty much an open platform with a lot of freedom for publishers and its users.
Then really easy to go viral on anything. Now it’s really hard. Now you have to pass many touchpoints only then your content gains some reach.
Then the reach was open right when you published any content on your Facebook page. Now facebook holds it.
According to my experience when I post something and i know it is amazing content I notice Facebook analyses that content on the backend and once it passes all the algorithmic touchpoints then it’s released slowly. That’s my theory.
How To Survive & Grow Now
Right, this down somewhere and make sure you work on it. Facebook should not be your only source of traffic now.
You just cannot rely on Facebook now for easy traffic. It was true earlier, Facebook still sends crazy traffic but you have to be authentic on Facebook to survive.
This means you now have to invest in resources like content creation, videos and all that.
Start working on top social media platforms at a time like Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, and Pinterest.
Prioritize whichever ones you want to work on first but you must establish your presence on all the above platforms if you want to survive in the future.
Apart from Facebook I myself have so far tested and verified the potential on youtube and Pinterest. I just published a story on my Pinterest experience and you must read it.
One more platform that I did not mention above and I never tried and I am not aware of the potential of that platform is Linkin.
I do believe it’s a big mistake that I haven’t yet explored that platform and in 2020 it’s one of my objectives to verify the potential of LinkedIn. And I am really hoping for great results.
I have also started working on Instagram and I would be sharing the results at the end of 2020 if I get any success on Instagram.
I have never monetized it before but I am also sure it’s a gold mine.
Why do I say to survive on Facebook you have to establish a presence on other social media platforms?
because Facebook likes brands. which means they like quality and authenticity. They like anything which provided quality to its users.
They now detect your domain activity outside Facebook which signals to them if the content shared through the domain should be given more reach or not.
Start Automating Your Tasks
With Facebook, I suggest you automate your content publishing through social media management services like Ifttt, Buffer, Publisher, etc. This will give you enough time to start working on other projects that you might have in mind.
Ifttt automatically publishes or fetches the content from my domain, buffer schedules it. Adublisher bulk uploads and schedules all my image posts on my facebook page for weeks in advance to create engagement.
This automatically grows and monetizes my Facebook page. I actually just gave you a trick which I was hoping to sell in the future.
I will be reviewing the above content management services very soon also.
So by automating my Facebook page content distribution I have now time to work on other social media platforms.
Which you can do also. If you have any questions then comment below. I like to read your comments and help you. So don’t hesitate to ask any questions if you have any.