Have you seen The Social Dilemma streaming on Netflix yet? I just watched it this week after my mastermind friends were chatting about it our slack channel.
The premise of the documentary is that everything we do online as users is carefully monitored and recorded so that the various social media platforms can serve up advertising that will entice us to keep scrolling.
Various people in the film stated that there are teams and teams of engineers watching and recording everything that we do and their job is to use our own psychology against us. They want to know what we like and what we do so that they can show us advertising that will keep us engaged in the application longer.
The idea is that AI (artificial intelligence) understands our likes so accurately that our entire online experience is extremely customized to what the algorithm thinks we want to see.
Facebook and Instagrams number one priority is to keep users engaged across their ecosystem. The algorithm is focused on serving content and messaging with the highest engagement and relevance. Emotional resonance and sentiment around content matters on the platforms as well. source Lauren Guerrieri
Check out this example in the trailer about searching for “Climate Change”
Google will autofill different words based on your area, your search history, your social likes and your experience online.
Now as a user this is 100% creepy and big brother-ish.
But as a business owner who uses social media to grow my brand and followers, it is a bit intriguing.
Think about it.
As a business owner if you want to reach your audience consistently, being on social media is a near guarantee of ROI.
Facebook/Instagram/Twitter/Pinterest/Reddit are all investing billions to attract users and keep them on their platforms, all you need to do is show up.
As a business owner we can take advantage of all of this user data and proactively build our organic following on social by showing up and taking advantage of the algorithms.
In addition to organic growth, running ads will help expand your reach.
If you need help with social ads, my dear friend, Katie Spellman of Revel and Grow is a facebook ads genius and she knows how to take advantage of Facebook and Instas algorithm to grow your audience.
If you are not sure your audience is on Facebook and Insta, I am willing to bet they are.
Facebook ads reach 1.95 billion of the platform’s 2.5 billion monthly users.
According to Hootsuite’s Digital 2020 report, that’s 32% of the world’s population (over the age of 13). Facebook is, yes, still the biggest social platform on record.
80% of social referrals to ecommerce sites came from Facebook in Q1 2019
26.7% of Facebook Pages use paid media
The average organic reach for a Facebook post is 5.17% of a Page’s likes, while the average paid reach is 28.1% of total reach
Worldwide, the average Facebook user has clicked 12 ads in the last 30 days
92% of Instagram users say they’ve followed a brand, clicked on their website, or made a purchase after seeing a product/service on the platform
31% of Instagram ad budgets go to Stories
One thing about Instagram, is that they make it very difficult to click out of instagram and navigate to an outside site. Instagram drives very little traffic – under 1% overall across all niches.
So my advice, be on Instagram if you like, it is great to grow your brand awareness, but if you want traffic, post on Facebook.
I am pulling together some resources that will help you grow your audience using social media, if you are interested sign up and I will send you the deets.