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If you have been doing organic video marketing on social networks, you may have noted that your posts are getting fewer likes and comments, and generating fewer new followers.
Many small business owners marketing on Instagram, TikTok, Youtube and others have become frustrated, some of them to the point of wanting to give up on social media altogether.
But should they?
Yes, things are changing on social networks, and they are changing in a big way…
But once you understand what is actually happening, you may want to ride it out.
Allow me to elaborate:
2 Huge shifts in social media video marketing
1. User behavior has changed dramatically:
In the past, you would put out content, follow some other people, and you would systematically generate more followers and engagement on your posts.
As your influence grew, so did the growth rate of your channel/profile, and so did the engagement numbers on your new posts.
When people saw something they liked, they would engage with it. When they saw something they enjoyed or found useful, they would
But now…
It is as if the users on social networks just don’t care any more.
However, it is not quite as simple as that. Over time, users have handed out so many likes, and followed so many other users and pages, that they found themselves drowned in masses of posts in their feeds.
Let’s not even talk about how automated (and even bulk) video creation using AI has added to that number. That’s a discussion for another day.
Since there is only so much they can consume in the time they have available, the attention they can devote to each piece of content they see has dwindled.
On top of that, most people are already receiving so much content in their feeds that they don’t follow anyone new unless it is something amazing, or if that content is something they need to reach specific goals.
To top it all off, it eventually came to the point where users were simply no longer that interested in the content they subscribed to long ago.
So, in short, social media users are handing out much fewer likes, comments and follows.
2. Social networks have responded:
Social networks are businesses. They are in it for the (mountains of) money. So as you would expect, they noticed the shift long before we did, and adapted to it.
This is what they did:
a. They created algorithms that identified people who are likely to be interested in any new piece of content – whether they are in your network or not. In many cases, users have found that most of the people who see their content are non-followers.
A year or so ago, that would have been wonderful news, but now…
Now those people are much less likely to follow you or interact with your content.
Be that as it may, the bottom line is that more non-followers will now see your content than before.
b. They started paying less attention to engagement metrics, and focused instead on total watch time, average percentage watched, and percentage of people who watch all the way through.
Since engagement could no longer be trusted as the sole indicator of video quality, they had to observe user interaction, and act accordingly.
So where does that leave YOU?
Well, the good part is that the people we always wanted to reach (non-followers) are now seeing our content.
(Unless you use Linkedin, which is still stuck in the stone ages, and only show it to your followers and people who find you using search.)
The bad part is that they are much less likely to follow you than they used to be.
So what do you do now?
1. Work on the quality of your video content. Cut out all of the fluff, and keep people engaged to keep watching for as long as possible.
2. Instead of drawing people into your social media following as a top-of-funnel connection, move the conversation off-site.
Ideally, use an app like Manychat (which allows you to use comments with specific trigger words to send autoresponse messages to commenters) to give people more information, send them to your offer, or send them to a landing page.
Instead of trying to get someone as a follower, try to get them as an email subscriber, or try to get them to contact you or make a small purchase.
Just get them to take SOME form of action – because following you has become one of the less likely ones they will take.