There was a time when updating your Facebook marketing strategy meant learning where your cover photo went, figuring out how to pin a post and making sure your business had filled out its new Timeline.
We know because we wrote about it. More than a decade ago, Hummingbird Creative Group published a blog called The New Face of Facebook about Facebook’s then-new Timeline layout. At the time, businesses were learning how to use cover photos, milestones, photo albums, apps and highlighted posts to make their Pages more engaging.
The features feel like a time capsule now. But the bigger lesson behind that article has aged surprisingly well: Facebook changes. Your strategy has to be able to change with it.
Today, a successful Facebook marketing strategy has to account for the much larger Meta ecosystem. Content is increasingly personalized. Video and Reels have become more prominent. Artificial intelligence is influencing recommendations, content creation, advertising and even how users discover information. Businesses can reach customers through feeds, video, Groups, ads, Messenger and other experiences across Meta.
So what is the “new face” of Facebook today? There isn’t just one. That’s exactly why businesses need a Facebook marketing strategy, not simply a Facebook posting schedule.
Facebook Has Changed. So Has the Job of Marketing on It.
For years, businesses approached social media with a fairly simple formula:
Create a business page.
Grow your followers.
Post consistently.
Try to get engagement.
That isn’t enough anymore.
A person looking for recommendations in a local Facebook Group behaves differently from someone watching Reels. A longtime customer following your Page has a different relationship with your brand than someone discovering you through an ad. A B2B decision-maker, parent, retiree, community advocate and prospective employee may all be on Facebook, but that doesn’t mean they’re using it for the same reason or responding to the same content.
There is no universal Facebook audience which means there should be no universal Facebook strategy.
The questions to ask are:
Who are we trying to reach? Why would they care? What do we want them to do next? And what role should Facebook play in making that happen?
Your Audience Should Determine Your Facebook Strategy
One of the biggest mistakes brands make on social media is starting with the platform instead of the person.
They are saying things such as
“More Reels should be posted”
“We should post three times a week.”
“We need to be more active on Facebook.”
Maybe. But why?
A good Facebook marketing strategy starts by understanding the people you need to reach: what matters to them, what questions they’re asking, what problems they’re trying to solve and where social media fits into their decision-making process.
For one organization, Facebook may be an important community-building tool. For another, paid Meta advertising may be far more valuable than organic posting. Another business may use the platform primarily to build familiarity and credibility before a prospect ever makes contact.
And another may discover that Facebook isn’t where the majority of its marketing resources should go at all.
Being on a platform is not a strategy. Being purposeful about why you’re there is.
That’s where target marketing becomes essential. Instead of creating content for an imaginary “Facebook audience,” create it for the actual people your organization needs to influence.
Stop Chasing the Algorithm. Build a Brand People Recognize.
Every major social platform has an algorithm, and every algorithm changes.
Businesses can spend a tremendous amount of energy trying to decode what the platform supposedly “wants” this month: shorter videos, longer videos, more comments, fewer links, a certain posting frequency or whatever tactic is generating buzz at the moment.
Understanding platform trends matters. Building your entire marketing strategy around them doesn’t.
Algorithms determine distribution. Your brand determines whether people care once they see you.
Strong social content should still look, sound and feel like your organization whether someone encounters it on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, your website, an email campaign, an advertisement or somewhere else entirely. That requires more than a logo in the corner of a graphic.
It requires a clear brand position, a recognizable visual identity, an intentional tone of voice and messaging that repeatedly reinforces what you want to be known for.
Social Media Content Should Do a Job
Every piece of content should have a reason to exist. Posting simply because the content calendar says Tuesday is not a marketing strategy.
Some content may need to build awareness, introducing your organization and helping the right people understand what makes you different.
Other content should build credibility, demonstrating expertise through useful information, perspectives and thought leadership. Some should build connection, showing the people, culture and values behind your organization. Some should support consideration, answering the questions prospective customers ask before making a decision.
And some should encourage action, whether that’s visiting your website, registering for an event, contacting your team, downloading a resource, making a purchase or starting a conversation.
Original Content Matters More Than Filling the Feed
As content creation becomes easier, including through AI, the internet isn’t exactly suffering from a shortage of posts.
The harder challenge is creating something worth paying attention to and that makes original thinking increasingly valuable.
Your company’s experience, perspective, customer knowledge, subject-matter expertise, research, case studies, stories and point of view are assets competitors can’t replicate simply by using the same social platform or content-generation tools.
Instead of asking:
“What can we post?”
Try asking:
“What do we know that would be valuable to the people we’re trying to reach?”
That shift opens the door to stronger content that is more relatable to your end user.
Organic and Paid Social Shouldn’t Live in Separate Worlds
Another reason there isn’t one Facebook strategy is that organic and paid social media can perform very different jobs.
Organic content can help businesses nurture existing communities, reinforce brand positioning, demonstrate expertise and stay visible with people who already know them.
Paid social can help reach specific audiences beyond those who already follow the brand and support goals such as awareness, website traffic, lead generation, event promotion or conversion.
The strongest approach often is understanding how they work together.
Strong organic content can reveal messages and creative ideas that resonate. Paid campaigns can expand the reach of those ideas. Campaign performance can then generate data that helps refine future messaging, audiences and creative.
Measure What Matters to the Business
Likes are easy to see but that doesn’t automatically make them the most important metric. The right measures depend on what you’re trying to accomplish.
If your goal is
- awareness: reach and meaningful engagement may tell part of the story
- generating traffic: you may care more about qualified website visits and what those users do once they arrive
- lead generation: conversions and cost per lead become more meaningful
- thought leadership: the quality of engagement, shares, conversations and influence within the right audience may matter more than the largest possible number of impressions
Facebook Isn’t the Strategy. Your Brand Is.
There will be another platform change, another algorithm change, another content format, and another AI tool.
The brands best prepared for those changes won’t necessarily be the ones chasing every new feature first.
They’ll be the ones that already know:
- who they’re trying to reach and what those people care about;
- what their brand stands for and makes them meaningfully different;
- messages and content they want their audience to remember;
- which channels can help accomplish their goals; and
- how they’ll measure whether the strategy is working.
At Hummingbird Creative Group, we help businesses connect brand strategy, brand identity, brand awareness, brand loyalty and the customer experience so marketing channels like social media aren’t operating on their own.
Our work can include target audience and customer insights, brand positioning and messaging, content strategy, social media management, digital marketing, website strategy, SEO, advertising, thought leadership and measurement, because your customers don’t experience your brand one tactic at a time. They experience the whole thing.
Facebook will keep changing. So will Instagram. LinkedIn. Search. AI. And whatever platform comes next.
Let’s work together build something designed to last longer than the next algorithm update.
ORIGINAL BLOG FROM 2012 – The New Face of Facebook
Mostly everyone you know is probably using Facebook. According to the Facebook Newsroom, as of March 2012 there are 526 million daily users on average flipping through photos, changing status or commenting on “friends” posts. Adage.com says that almost every large university or charity in America has their own page to generate brand identifications, and many businesses have Facebook pages of their own. What does this mean for your business though? 77% of consumers that interact with brands on Facebook do so by reading the posts and status updates the brand puts up, according to Adage.com. So to stay relevant with your business’ Facebook is the first step to a productive account. You need to keep things interesting, and Facebook is helping you out with that through new layout design called “Timeline”.
The first noticeable change about timeline is the profile picture area. There is now a large photo spanning the screen called the “cover photo”. The businesses that are doing it right are incorporating the two. While Facebook has limits on what your cover photo can say (No – “Click Like!” or “Buy Now!” can be up there), you can still do some great advertising with the space. Showing a strong image and using your tagline is a simple, but effective start.
Another cool thing about timeline is the milestone section. Timeline is what the name implies… a timeline, so milestones are events/dates that are important to your business. For example, the year your business started, put up a photo in the milestone of the way you and your brand looked back then, big hair and all! Keep it interesting and fun with something that draws people to your page, or better yet gets them to “Like”it.
Photo Albums have become more prominent in timeline; there is even a highlighting option to show more of the photos. People are visually motivated (as we know from the quick rise in Pinterest), so use photos in your Facebook to keep fans coming back for more.
Apps have also become more developed in the newest version of Facebook. The coolest thing about the apps you can download is the edit ability of the image that shows up in your top bar. Custom graphics can be designed for your brand and placed in quite easily as a visual callout. It would be different from the usual, and more likely to be clicked on by consumers.
There are some cool new ways to highlight wall posts, too. Pin to top is an option that pins the selected wall post to the top left of your timeline. It will be the first thing people see every time they look at your posts, for at least 7 days. Until you unpin it, that’s where it stays. You can also highlight a post and make it span the 2 columns showing more of the image /quote etc., and making it more noticeable. This will stay for as long as you leave it highlighted.
The good and bad of Facebook is like anything successful, it is always changing. Attempting to stay updated is always the challenge. For more info on using timeline, view our iconographic. For social media help or design call 919-854-9100 ext 301 or email wendy@ hummingbird-creative.com.
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