Our obsession over methodical traffic and how/why things go viral has allowed our clients to see a constant increase in reach on Facebook. Within the past five months, many publishers have been experiencing another decline in Facebook reach. In fact, reach is down as much as 42% so far this year. It's a trend that persists despite the rise of content championing polarizing stories and social-friendly videos. At RebelMouse, our clients continue to see their Facebook reach increase. We look at changes in the media landscape and platform updates as a challenge and an opportunity.
The direction has sparked questions about what Facebook has been doing to its algorithm, and what publishers can and should do in response. With the right mix of technology + strategy, we've created a content distribution formula that truly works for the properties we power.
Here are seven reasons why our Facebook game is 👌 .
1. Server Response Time
Facebook is prioritizing faster-loading pages, so we got faster too. It all boils down to user experience, and fast load times + page speed are musts if you want readers to stick around and consume your content.
The difference we see is unreal:
2. Social UX for Media: A Page View Game Changer
Social UX for Media is our way of making your site as viral and binge-worthy as the Facebook News Feed. This format enables our clients to present their users with content in a format they're already familiar using. We've seen clients double their traffic within 10 days using our highly optimized layout. It's working for the amazing media properties Axios, EcoWatch, Dance Magazine, and others we power.
Here's how Social UX for Media is impacting our clients' page views:
3. Facebook Instant Articles Optimization
We always tell our clients to "go all in" with Facebook Instant Articles — and we mean all in. This includes using video, producing engaging and intelligently designed copy, making sure your pages load fast, and ensuring articles are perfectly optimized for social. Clients that stick to this formula have experienced up to $25 CPM on Instant Articles.
4. Facebook Live Campaigns
Video continues to dominate in terms of engagement and reach, and native video even more so. Broadcasting live helps our clients get the right visibility across their audiences, and keeps their content mix fresh and engaging. Leveraging those earned video views to create custom audiences for future retargeting ensures our clients get the most out of their content.
5. New Content Lifecycle
It's important to work with other Facebook Pages that have high follower counts, and practice the law of reciprocity to build repeat visits from loyal followers.
6. Research Is Everything
We ask our clients to figure out which content is polarizing to their users. And once we're armed with that information, we work together to create related child properties as part of a larger site network. We all know that high affinity works well on social, and once it's mixed with the right technology and strategy, its effect and reach is undeniable.
7. Take Advantage of Instagram
Utilizing platforms like Instagram is an abstract value that is gaining momentum. We're building audiences and traffic everywhere, across platforms. Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter, Snapchat — they're all here to send more traffic out to our sites.
At the end of the day, it's pretty simple: The world is changing, and if you change with it there's plenty of opportunity. The key is that you can't do all of this on a decentralized, custom CMS like WordPress, where every update has to be pushed out individually and security intrusions are the norm. It's a broken model emulated by too many platforms.
That's why we set out to solve this problem with a centralized, social CMS built for speed. In our world, the recent, months-long decline in Facebook reach for many publishers is merely another opportunity to help our clients rise above the rest.
