With new changes to Facebook's pages, it is a good time for colleges to consider adjusting their social media marketing.

1. More Changes With Facebook and What They Mean for
your School
Slide 1
More Changes With Facebook and What
They Mean for your School

2. More Changes With Facebook and What They Mean for
your School
Slide 2
1) Organic Reach Still on a Steady Decline
2) Solicited Likes and Shares
3) New Page Layouts
4) Slingshot
Overview
Source: Higher Education Marketing – More Changes With Facebook and What They Mean for your School

3. More Changes With Facebook and What They Mean for
your School
Slide 3
 If you haven’t noticed yet, the organic reach that your posts
receive has likely been in steady decline for many months, a
trend that doesn’t appear to be abating any time soon.
 While some have speculated this is an elaborate ploy to force an
increase on your ad spend to reach your followers, there’s more to
the story than that.
 What this means is that your posts will not be shown to as many
followers as they have in the past, but the more engagement there is
on a post, the more visible it will become.
 Thus, it’s not just enough to be posting, but more than ever your
posts have to have a clear focus and strategy for engaging your
followers.
 As Josh Constine’s recent article on Tech Crunch illustrates, “the
number of Pages Liked by the typical Facebook user grew more
than 50% last year,” and it’s getting increasingly competitive to gain
attention in the limited amount of News Feed space.
1. Organic Reach Still on a Steady Decline
Source: Higher Education Marketing – More Changes With Facebook and What They Mean for your School

4. More Changes With Facebook and What They Mean for
your School
Slide 4
 So while it’s true that it’s harder to reach followers
organically, it’s not true that you absolutely have to resort to
boosting all of your posts monetarily – although for important
posts, this can be useful.
 Selectively boosting posts that are important, such as
announcements or contests, means that you’ll get the
important and pertinent information into the hands of more
people, faster.
 However, it’s still very possible to create engaging and top-
quality posts that garner up the likes and shares you’re used
to without resorting to increasing your ad spend.
1. Organic Reach Still on a Steady Decline
Source: Higher Education Marketing – More Changes With Facebook and What They Mean for your School

5. More Changes With Facebook and What They Mean for
your School
Slide 5
 Facebook has started really cracking down on “like-baiting”
pages with posts that attempt to bolster the popularity of a
page by asking people to like or share it.
 Not only will Facebook restrict that post from appearing on
your users’ newsfeeds, but apparently pages that commit
multiple like-baiting offenses will have their posts buried or
suppressed.
 It seems a pretty harsh penalization considering it was once
common practice for businesses to pay Facebook for ads getting
people to Like their Page, but the aim is to combat spam and
artificially inflated popularity on posts.
 However, this presents a challenge to marketers, as it’s not
exactly clear how Facebook defines a like-baiting post.
2. Solicited Likes and Shares
Source: Higher Education Marketing – More Changes With Facebook and What They Mean for your School

6. More Changes With Facebook and What They Mean for
your School
Slide 6
 While there’s no hard and fast rule, suffice it to say you’d
better pay extra close attention to how your posts are
worded, and how you try and engage with your followers.
 When creating engaging posts, you should remember to:
 Use a call to action that doesn’t use the words “Like,” “Share” or
“Comment.”
 Use a question in your post to get people commenting, instead of
telling them to.
 Create engaging content that people will want to interact with, don’t
just tell them to.
 Constantly test how your posts are phrased and how well they do.
 Don’t forget to log all of this information and to check your Facebook
analytics regularly.
 Contrast and compare, and figure out what’s working best.
2. Solicited Likes and Shares
Source: Higher Education Marketing – More Changes With Facebook and What They Mean for your School

7. More Changes With Facebook and What They Mean for
your School
Slide 7
 Facebook has unveiled a new, more streamlined look for
Pages, changing the positioning and size of some features
in the process.
 While the changes are mostly stylistic in nature, with the shifting of the
Like, Message and Follow buttons to sit on top of the cover photo, the
narrowing of the timeline and moving your apps, people to invite, photos
and other information to the left-hand side, there are also some changes
to be aware of.
 Having all your pertinent info on the left side means that information that
was formerly buried in the About section – which was notoriously hard to
locate – is now much more visible, letting your audience glean facts
about your college or university like your address and phone number
right on the main page.
 There’s also the addition of the “This Week” bar on the right hand side,
which gives you helpful statistics about how your page has been doing.
Information such as likes, the number of ads running, unread messages
and notifications are easily viewable now.
3. New Page Layouts
Source: Higher Education Marketing – More Changes With Facebook and What They Mean for your School

8. More Changes With Facebook and What They Mean for
your School
Slide 8
 Slingshot, as its being called internally, is Facebook’s
alleged new Snapchat clone, and as we’ve previously
discussed, the potential for colleges and universities to use
platforms like Snapchat for student marketing are more vast
than you might think.
 The biggest boon for marketers when it comes to Slingshot could be
the ability to leverage their Facebook presence, in tandem with the
ephemeral nature of the messaging app.
 Combining your existing pull on Facebook with snappy video
distribution could mean an exciting way to promote student life or
supplement posts about key events.
 As not much is known about this Snapchat clone, it remains to be
seen whether it will prove a worthy tool or go the way of Poke.
4. Slingshot
Source: Higher Education Marketing – More Changes With Facebook and What They Mean for your School

9. More Changes With Facebook and What They Mean for
your School
Slide 9
 These are just a few of the more important changes
Facebook has introduced recently, and there are bound to
be more to come.
4. Slingshot
Source: Higher Education Marketing – More Changes With Facebook and What They Mean for your School

10. More Changes With Facebook and What They Mean for
your School
Slide 10
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