THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL

 

We know most entrepreneurs are aware of the power of social media marketing.  We also know that the vast majority of us haven’t figured out how to use it to grow our businesses. 

 

From the beginning, social media seemed like this cool new tool.  We all rushed to create our Facebook business pages and start posting.  We posted and we posted and we posted….and nothing happened.  

 

By now, many of us have largely abandoned our pages, or at most, pay some third party service to create a post every couple of days just to maintain a presence.  We have a 1000 or so page followers, but nothing to move the needle.  Certainly not effective enough to invest serious time, energy, and resources into it.

 

What you might not know is that social media is like a living breathing organism, growing, changing, and evolving every single day.  Over the last four years or so, since the launch of Tik Tok, the platforms have created new algorithms designed to keep people on the platforms longer.  It makes sense right?  The longer people stay on the platforms, the more advertising they can sell, hence, the more money they make.  

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THE INTEREST GRAPH

 

This evolution to more interest based content distribution is called the Interest Graph.  The platforms keep data on what each individual finds entertaining and feeds the person more of this type of content.  It’s likely you’ve seen teenagers robotically staring at their phone for hours at a time as they scroll through video after video, stopping to chuckle every once in a while.  But it’s not just teenagers doing this anymore, it’s everyone, and this is the Interest Graph at work.

 

Jump on YouTube and look up a video on almost any random topic.  Guess what; they’ve got you.  As you continue to consume more related content, they’ll continue blasting you with more closely related content.  Do you prefer watching funny videos of people doing crazy tricks?  Don’t worry, they’ve got plenty of that too, and it will take over your feed in a heartbeat.

 

This leads us to our headline.  The most important marketing trick that you’re not using is creating content to feed your potential customers information about your business using the Interest Graph.  This may be the most powerful marketing tool ever invented, yet the most entrepreneurs remain blind to it.  The power is in the algorithm.  It will identify people who have visited a website related to what you do and place your content in their feed.  This means your potential customers will be fed your content!  They will literally drop it right in their laps.  This can be an incredibly powerful tool for growth as you can quickly and efficiently increase connections and awareness of your business.

 

The few companies that are actually trying to harness social for new business still seem to be missing the mark.  It’s not enough to just create any kind of content, it has to be GOOD content.  It must be interesting, entertaining, or educational.  It needs to be good enough that someone would invest their time consuming it.  Swiping to the next video is far too easy.  You’ve got milliseconds to capture attention and stop the scroll.  You’d better make it good and it better get to the point fast!

 

While you might be thinking this isn’t for me, or feeling overwhelmed by the thought of becoming a content creator, you should realize that this is the new way of doing business.  If you don’t figure this out, your competitors will, and you’ll be left behind.  You'll be left reminiscing about the old days when you could just run an ad in the yellow pages or buy some Google pay-per-click to get customers, while your competition is slowly putting you out of business.

 

The power of social media platforms continues to grow everyday.  Don’t miss this once in a lifetime opportunity to capture your piece of the pie.  The more content you make, the more your business will grow.  And, don’t forget, unlike any advertising medium in history, distribution of your content is absolutely FREE.