Podcast Description
In this podcast I’ll go over organic content. Is it necessary to be successful with Facebook Ads? Should brands spend any time creating content?
Facebook Advertising requires an ecosystem and in this podcast episode I’ll clarify how to integrate your organic content strategy.
Mini-course training mentioned on this podcast: manuelsuarez.com/minicourses
Podcast File
Organic Content on Facebook and Instagram… Is it Still Necessary?
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Podcast Transcription
Welcome once again here. This is Manuel Suarez with the Facebook Marketing Ninja Podcast one more time. I want to thank you for tuning in. I want to thank you for listening to me wherever you may be listening to whether that’s doing exercise or in the shower or while you’re driving or anywhere. It could be in the office. I think that a podcast is such a great, great tool for us entrepreneurs to be able to communicate to the world and for us to receive communication from other awesome entrepreneurs because we tend to be really busy.
If you’re listening to this podcast, I know one thing for sure, you are an entrepreneur. Meaning that you have a business or you want to create a business and you want to figure out how to take advantage of the greatest marketing era in history. So, I want to thank you for being here and I hope that it’s providing a ton of value. Today, I have a great one for you. This podcast is something that I created just based on questions that I’m getting on social media because I see a lot of people asking the same questions over and over. Questions about: How much content should I post on social media? Should I do any contest? Any content organically? Is content even relevant at this point? What should I do with my organic Facebook page? What should I do on my Instagram profile?
LET ME EXPLAIN TO YOU A COUPLE OF THINGS ON WHAT’S GOING ON
In 2014, when I started to learn about the Facebook advertising platform, a lot of brands were actually doing some incredible things organically and they built some powerful social media channels just organically. At that point, there were a lot of pages that did not even need to invest money on advertising. That was actually something that was doable. In 2014 the algorithm changed, Facebook needed to make money. They are a publicly traded company. They do have investors. Meaning that they are required to make money or else they plummet and they will stop growing. It’s what it is. They’re also running a business. If you guys are here with me, you are running a business and you need to make money. If you don’t make money, guess what, you get shut down. The thing doesn’t operate anymore without income. Cash is oxygen, cash is life. You need them to keep on expanding. That’s just the way it is, right?
So, Facebook needed to make more money. What they did was, for many years, they invested heavily on capturing attention and they got billions of people. Usually, when you say billions, you are exaggerating. But, not in this case. They actually got billions of people to get really obsessed about using the platform actively for their own entertainment. Once they did that, they`gave us advertisers and brands the ability to reach them. That’s what I have been doing since 2014 – I’ve been paying money through my brands and my clients to Facebook so they can actually put my messages in front of them, in front of these people that are using the platform.
In 2014, it became something that was mandatory now. If you want to grow in social media, if you wanted to have a follower, if you want to be able to create an impact in the current environment, you have to give Facebook some money. People were complaining. And while people were complaining, I was actually riding the wave, the advertising wave. Those are one of the things that I want to clarify with you guys today because it’s a very different thing to be a content creator versus being an advertiser. Content creation and advertising are two separate subjects. That’s just a reality. If you grab your phone or your camera or your video recording device or whatever it is that you have going on, and you just record content all day long. I mean, you can literally be recording a content 16 hours a day. I hear some people talking about Just do a lot of content. Just do a lot of content. Sure! It’s important. But, if you do content all day long, let’s say 16 hours a day for 2 years in a row, there is a likelihood that nobody will ever pay attention because you are not figuring out a very important element to content creation – that is the distribution of that content. Those are two separate subjects, two separate arts. You need to know how to create content, how to talk to a camera, how to talk to a microphone, how to take pictures, how to write articles. You need to know all of that but now you also, together with that, need to learn how to distribute that, how to get that message in front of people so they can actually be engaged with your brand.
So, that’s something for you to keep in mind overall that it’s not only about content creation. Both elements are really, really important. If you don’t pay attention to both of them, you’re going to fail. Let’s say that you get really professional as an advertiser and you mastered the Facebook advertising platform, and you’re a genius, you know how to use the Facebook Business Manager, you know how to use Instagram, you know how to advertise like a maniac. You’re so good at it but then you have a lack of content. Well, you’re also not going to make it, guys. That’s just the reality because the content is going to be required for your ads to be able to eventually give you a positive return on the investment. So, you have to be able to get really good in those things, both of them actively. And that’s what I talk about consistently. I want you guys to learn about content creation and I want you guys to learn about advertising that content, getting that content to be seen by many people out there.
ORGANIC CONTENT
Just in case that you are pretty new at this advertising world, in case that you are from another language and English is not your first language, I don’t know if you know what the word organic means. Organic simply means that in the advertising realm, you are not investing dollars to get it seen by people. It’s occurring in an organic fashion. Meaning that you are not putting financial energy behind it. That is organic content. If I have a Facebook page and I pull out the app, once I pull out the app, I’ll open up the publishing option, the button, and I put something on it. Let’s say a picture, let’s say a video, let’s say I read an article, I read a post, or whatever it is. If I publish that, that is going to go into my Facebook page organically. Let me tell you something, guys. If you understand the value of this, then you will use it consistently because remember, this is something new. Facebook is free for you to use and for me to use. How cool is it that you can actually have a media platform like Facebook, like Instagram, that you can actually simply pull it out and publish a message for free? Do you know that that’s something new in this world? It’s brand new.
You never had the opportunity of grabbing a newspaper, a radio, a magazine, a television ad or something and put it out there for free. You couldn’t do that. This is a brand new phenomenon of this current world. Why are we complaining about the fact that we don’t have an organic reach that we used to? It’s a free publication. The fact that you have 2%, 8%, 10%, you should be celebrating that because at least you have something and you can keep on doing it actively, right? The point is organic content is still really, really valuable but you need to master distribution of that content, paid advertising for that content. You have to do it actively and efficiently. If you do this actively and efficiently, your business will eventually grow. That organic content gets better and better and better along the way and more people see it.
That’s something that we saw through the social media channels that I have created from Dr. Berg’s own channels to my dad’s channels. The more that you put out there and the more consistent that your content gets, the more active that you actually show that you are, that actually feeds the algorithm. So, if you have 1000 followers and you get the content seen by let’s say, 100 people, you’ve got a 10% organic reach overall. That’s what we got going on right now. We got anywhere from 2% to 10% organic reach. One thing to note about this, the better your content is, the more that people like it, the higher organic reach you’re going to get overall. So, if you have content that is being loved by people, that is being shared, liked, commented, is getting a lot of engagement, then people are going to engage with it, share it, and that’s going to help you find more people to share this content with. And, organically, it’s going to get a higher and higher reception overall. If your content is not being liked by anybody, is not being accepted by anybody, nobody is commenting, nobody is doing anything with it, then the organic reach depletes – it goes down dramatically. Now, you get penalized. If you have 1000 people, if you’re lucky, you’re going to get 20 people to see it, 2%. That’s what we have when it comes to organic reach overall. But, as you grow both in your advertising efforts and your content creation quantity of it, that organic reach is actually eventually going to snowball and continue to snowball.
MY OWN CONTENT, MY EXAMPLE
My own content. I am going really heavy on Facebook, on Instagram. I’m going really heavy on YouTube, I’m going heavy on LinkedIn. The effect of putting heavy content out there does not happen overnight. And this is the organic content not paid advertising. This takes a long time, guys. And you’ve got to keep on doing it. It’s just like building a business. You’ve got to keep on putting it out there, and putting it out there, and consistently putting it out there. Today, we have the privilege and also the luck that we can actually create content very easily. From cell phone devices to recording devices that we have all over the place to platforms that give you information about what your customers and potential customers are looking for. One platform that I have talked about several times before.
If you want to find out what content you should create for your potential customers, for your potential audience, you can go to a place like answerthepublic.com. Answerthepublic.com is a great place to find out what people are asking about your brand and you can create content about that because when you create content about that, people are going to slowly generate interest about it and it’s just going to grow. And not only that, what you do with this organic content is now you can grab it and figure out which content is being accepted the best, which content is being liked the most by people, and now you can put some advertising dollars behind it.
PANIC IN THE FACEBOOK PLATFORM
Let me get you ready for one thing. This is important to understand. In 2014, the algorithm changed. Organic content and Facebook plummeted, right? Overall, we went from having a 40% organic reach to now getting under 10% in many cases. Facebook started forcing advertisers to actually invest dollars to get their brands to be seen by people. That’s what happened in 2014. In 2018, early last year, a year ago, Facebook also created a panic in the community of advertisers because they rolled out this update, even Mark Zuckerberg came out and he talked about that, that what he wanted to do was actually go back to providing a family-friend oriented factor in which content from friends and family had actually priority over content from brands and advertisers. This created this enormous confusion in the advertising community which is good for us. Actually, I took advantage of that because when people were panicking, I was jumping all over that and I realized that it actually became a better opportunity for us because people thought that it was something that was damaging the platform.
What Facebook did was that they actually in 2018 started adjusting their algorithm to make sure that the organic content that people are posting, friends, family, and brands, the friends and families are senior over brands. So, that means that you as a brand, as an advertiser, now, even more than in 2014 had no choice but to learn how to advertise on the platform. The organic game of being able to create this incredible organic monster’s noble machine for your brand was over. If you only depend on organic content, then you are going to die. That’s just what happened in the whole change this 2018. In my case, I kept on surviving. In my brand’s case, we kept on surviving because we focused on creating advertising monsters. Meaning that we focused on giving money to Facebook so they can continue to help us find our customers. Facebook is not going to change that algorithm. Remember, Facebook’s money comes directly from advertising. That’s how they make their dollars. Over 95% of Facebook’s revenue is advertisers like you and me that actually give them money to advertise on their platform. Remember, they are an actual publicly traded corporation which means that they need to make money.
Do you think that they are going to sacrifice the money that they are making? No. Everything that they do, all the changes that they do, all the updates that they do, they do them to protect the user experience so the user stays on the platform so the advertiser can actually advertise their products and services in it because if users jump off the platform, Facebook dies. That’s what you guys got to understand. It’s important for them to actually have users feeling comfortable and happy with the platform, being engaged. Trust me, they have done so. And, they have done so very well. No matter what pandemonium we’re going through, no matter what noise, no matter what’s going on out there, guys, people are still actively using the platform. 2.4 billion people almost are using the platform actively every single month. So, the numbers don’t lie. Facebook keeps on expanding and it keeps on being a power player. But, you need to somehow understand that your brand and business has to carry with it a combination of organic content and paid advertising for that organic content.
The reason that I am talking to you about this right now is because I also want you to get ready for a process that is going to repeat itself with the platform that we call Instagram. Remember, Instagram is owned by Facebook. Facebook bought this company for next to nothing, for peanuts, several years ago and it’s now a monster. Instagram is estimated to generate $14 billion in 2019 through advertisers. Today, on Instagram, in January as I am recording this right now with you guys, in 2019, the organic reach is really good. You can have an organic profile that has 25%, even 30% and in some cases more if you’re really good, organic reach. That’s going to disappear at some point this year. I wouldn’t think that this is going to pass more than this year. This year at some point, Facebook is going to say to you, “Look, I already have more than a billion user on this platform. I gave it all to you. This platform is a power source right now and you can use it to advertise your products, your businesses, and services. You can now use it to take advantage of this incredible attention. But, I’m not going to let you reach them organically as much as I used to before. I’m going to have you pay for it right now.”
If you want to reach them because your organic reach is going to come crashing down. And, as we get the organic reach crashing down, do you know who’s going to win? The ones that are going to win are the ones that are paying for advertising out there, the ones that are learning the advertising platform. In case you didn’t know, Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and Whatsapp, they can all be handled from within one single platform. I’m sure that if you’re listening to the Facebook Marketing Ninja Podcast, you probably have your Business Manager set up through business.facebook.com. Well, this is where you make the magic happen, this particular place. One of the things that we’re doing right now is that we’re testing paid advertising campaigns exclusively on Instagram through the Business Manager. So, for example, if we have a campaign which is a conversions campaign to generate sales of our products, purchases, we are actually just testing out Instagram-only placements. And right now, it’s so affordable that it’s incredible both on Instagram feed, Instagram stories, and it’s going to continue to get better.
Another thing that is going to happen in the future is…
Another thing that is going to happen in the future is Instagram direct messaging a.k.a. DM is going to separate as a stand-alone application and you’re also going to be able to generate DM subscribers just like you can on Messenger subscribers. That’s going to happen at some point this year or probably early next year. We already went one step in that direction of this whole integration. Today, as I’m recording this right now in January, Facebook just rolled out an announcement in regards to the integration that is happening between Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram. They are connecting the messaging apps all over the place.
So, for example, now, something is going to happen towards the end of 2019. I’m not making this up, guys. This is not a prediction. This is not something that I am trying to be Nostradamus about. This is something that was announced publicly today by Facebook. By the end of 2019, or by the beginning of 2020, you’re going to be able to message directly somebody from WhatsApp to Messenger or from Messenger to WhatsApp. Even if they don’t have Messenger, even if they don’t have WhatsApp, it’s going to be an interconnected world. So, this thing is just getting started and it’s only getting better so you’ve got to be ready for that overall. So just end that rant right there.
Let me talk to you guys about something very practical in regards to content creation. I get asked consistently by people of: How much content should I create? How much should I post? The answer to that question is going to be, How bad do you want it? How bad do you want to get there? How many ambitions do you have? Because overall, that’s what’s going to determine the amount of content that you create. If you have big dreams of building multi-million dollar brands, if you have dreams, you’ve got to make sure that your actions match those ambitions and those dreams because you can get there by going at one content piece per week. But why not figure out how to do 21 content pieces a week when you have all these interconnected worlds and universes where you can actually have people help you build your content for you and expand your brands.
You can go to freeeup.com. You can go to UpWork. You can go to Fiverr. You can hire some people to help you build your content for you. Look at me. Example, I have 12 editors pumping content out for me. All I’ve got to do is keep on talking to the camera, keep on talking to the podcast, keep on talking to the world and my meetings, and they grab my content and they document it and they do great content for it. You can build a lot of content for your brand. It doesn’t even require that you are only a personal brand. You can do content for your business, if you have a podcast around your business niche market. You can have success stories, testimonials. You can have tutorials of things, DIYs.
GET YOUR BRAND ON THE LEAD!
There are lots of things that you can do to get your brand front and center of the masses, of the millions of people consistently and just make that bucket of content wider and bigger and bigger every single day. So, the more content that you can do, the faster you get there. Not only that, the magic of the organic content is if you keep on getting through it, if you keep on snowballing, and it keeps on pushing in the right direction, close your eyes and go. Do it for months and don’t even look at the numbers. Don’t pay attention that you only had two views, or you had a hundred, or you had a thousand, or you had ten thousand. Guys, trust me. I’ve seen it. I saw it with Dr. Berg. I saw it with my dad. I’m seeing it with my own brand. It slowly creeps up but it does creep up. It is effective.
Once you actually get very consistent on this content creation process and figure out what are your strengths as a content creator and create your system to put your content out there consistently on Facebook and on Instagram and on all these platforms, even YouTube, what you do is you grab some of the best content and you put it out there, advertise in the social media world so it can help you find more people interested in what you have to offer and you can expand your audience. And now, you can have a bigger group of people you can sell your products and services to.
Trust me, it works. It works like magic, it’s powerful – a combination of organic content with advertising. So, you do have to understand the Facebook advertising platform. In that platform, you’re going to understand the Instagram, the Messenger, the WhatsApp, and the Facebook world, dominate Facebook Business Manager, get good at it, improve your ability to advertise on it. If you do so, your organic content is going to be more and more important every step of the way and you’re going to see more people seeing it, more people engaging and more people overall participating and connecting with your brand.
So, make sure that you do that. Figure out. What I want you guys to do after you’re done with this podcast, number 1, please make sure that you subscribe to the podcast. It’s going to help me find more people to help through this podcast. You can subscribe literally by just going to the main page of this podcast in your app and just hitting the subscribe button. It costs absolutely nothing and it’s going to take you less than a second to do so. After you do that, you just sit down and figure out what content can you actively create?
ABSOLUTELY NO MORE EXCUSES!
If you don’t know what to do because you don’t know how to write, you can find somebody to help you write stuff for you article formats so you can start posting it on social media with nice graphics and images. You can do quote cards for your brands. You can actually start generating some videos and get people to overall start creating video content for you. You can learn a little bit about software like Camtasia and learn how to create your own videos yourself. Short 1, 2, 3, 4-minute videos and put them out there in social media actively organically. You can learn how to do all that stuff. You can get on a podcast and just keep on doing it actively.
This is the way that you grow a business today. We’re not talking about 1990s business models. We’re not talking about the 1970s. We’re not even talking about the year 2000. In the year 2000, Facebook didn’t even exist. Did you guys know that? It’s today, 2019. How do you build a business today? Through social media marketing. Social media marketing is the fastest path to a thriving business today. This doesn’t come from a dream. I’m not making things up. I am watching it every single day right now. I am observing it.
THIS IS HOW YOU BUILD A BUSINESS TODAY
Do you want to go and put a tent out there and try to generate sales on your actual brick and mortar and you want to dress yourself as a chicken and try to go to the lights and bring people into your business? Or do you want to use social media to capture people where their attention is at? What do you want to do? Overall, you’ve got to understand where people’s attention is at and put yourself there, guys. Don’t be romantic about the way that business was built. Get in it. Get on the wave. Ride the wave with us along the way. I’m telling you. I get all excited about it because I’m passionate about it because it’s true.
One thing that I want you guys to let sink in for a second. Think about this for a second. Just take a deep breath and think about this for a second. We are the first generation. You that are listening to this podcast, you that are watching this video, or wherever you may be. I myself, we are the first generation to have access to this incredible internet era, the first one. Not our parents because they’re old. My dad got lucky, he’s 69. He had me. I made him a superstar, right? Not our great grandparents, not our children, because they were born into it. We are the first generation to have access to this online world to build our dreams and our goals.
So, what is the answer? A ton of content, a ton of information about your brand, putting your message out there consistently and actively and closing your eyes, putting the head down and working at it. What is work today? Work today is content creation and structuring around that content. That’s what work is today. Do a lot of that, do it consistently, learn how to advertise on Facebook and on Instagram, and on Messenger, and on WhatsApp. Learn how to do advertising on this incredible platform that are just getting started and trust me, all your dreams will come true and that is a fact. Again, I am seeing it every single day.
All right? So make sure that you put this into practice and I will see you guys on the next podcast. Make sure that you subscribe and join my Messenger. This is a little bit like of a short pitch to you guys. If you guys want to get the mini-course trainings on Facebook advertising on how to get some of the basics on using the Business Manager, I have a series of four mini-courses that I have created that are going to teach you some of the basics for that. And you want to jump all over them and get them done because they are great and they are free.
If you want to go to get those done, you can go to manuelsuarez.com/minicourses and you’ll get access, you will sign up and off you go. So, I hope to see you on the inside of the mini-course trainings and I’ll keep on engaging with the podcast. Share it, pass it on. Let other people know about this podcast. Help other people and let’s all have this incredible era of opportunity be a part of us and accomplish all our dreams for this incredible 2019 world. See you on the next podcast.
