Here at Likeable Lab, we love getting in amongst it and supporting our local community.
So, when Trustpower organised a gumboot throwing competition in Tauranga’s CBD to raise money and awareness for the I Am Hope campaign, we were there.
We had a lot of laughs and decided to film our antics to help spread the #gumbootupnz message.
This was duly posted to Facebook and soon friends, family and loyal Likeable Lab followers started ‘liking’ our throwing skills (or lack thereof).
The problem was, we didn’t put any paid advertising behind it. We had gone to the trouble of making a snazzy wee video, complete with our branding and soundtrack and then forgot to promote it.
You could call it an occupational hazard of working in social media – we are so busy thinking of our clients’ needs, that sometimes we forget to do the same for ourselves.
Lesson learnt. And a good opportunity to stress the importance of Facebook ads.
Organic reach – that is, the number of people who see your posts without you spending any money on them – has been steadily declining over the past few years.
If you want to be seen, you need to feed the algorithm monster – in cold, hard cash.
The Facebook algorithm ranks posts that show up on people’s news feeds, based on what is most relevant to them.
An algorithm update at the beginning of last year, designed to prioritise posts from family and friends over branded posts, meant that Facebook posts by businesses have become the poorer relatives.
There are ways, as a business, that you can try and outsmart the algorithm (more on that another day), but the only sure-fire way to get your content seen is through Facebook advertising.
The good news is a little goes a long way. Compared to traditional advertising methods such as print, radio and TV, Facebook advertising is a very cost-effective, targeted way to reach your intended audience.
Not only does Facebook advertising get you in front of people, it gets you in front of the RIGHT people. You can specify an audience and an objective – for example do you want to increase engagement or drive people to your website?
You can also set a budget, schedule your posts and track your results. The list goes on.
So, if you’re throwing a gumboot and you want people to know about it, throw some advertising budget at it too. Boots and all.
