30/01/2021
January 2021 gave us a peek into the future of online marketing: and it feels like a tornado!
1. APPLE started a major war with FACEBOOK over the iOS14 updates:
From now on, everyone who uses an Apple device will be able to choose if they want to see social media ads or not!
A lot of people are tired of seeing ads all the time, some of them sounding like clickbait.
"Become an authority over the weekend" was literally the last ad I saw yesterday in my feed! Terrible!
And Apple took notice.
It is estimated that 40% of all Facebook users have an Apple device. This means the disruption potential for the Facebook business is a big one.
Now, not all the businesses that run Facebook ads will be hit in the same way.
I know businesses with an Apple-user audience base as high as 70% or as little as 15%. It all depends on what countries you are targeting with your ads and what you are selling.
But I can anticipate a huge shift in the way everyone will market their business from now on.
2 . FACEBOOK decided to remove LIKES from pages.
LIKES are going away in favor of FOLLOWS.
Until now, people could like your page and follow it separately. On the new version, likes will be completely gone.
The problem is that, if you currently have 30,000 likes and only 100 of those people also clicked on the “follow” button, all you will have left will be 100 follows.
The LIKES will not be transferred over as a follower, unfortunately.
3. Many Instagram users have witnessed a sudden drop in their account growth and reach and engagement since October 2020.
Now, finally, we know why!
Instagram has contacted content creators and invited them to private 1-on-1 sessions to teach them how to grow their Instagram accounts right now (and it doesn’t look good).
And it looks like that:
- Post 3 times per week on the main feed
- Post 8-10 stories a week (and at least 2 a day)
- Post at least 7 Reels a week
- Post 3 IGTV a week
When I first read this, I had to stop myself from laughing out loud: who has the time to do this? Unless you are Gary Vee, but then he has grown up kids and a big content team who does the work. 😊
Now, if you have a business and you are reading this, you might wonder, “Well, this doesn’t concern me. I don’t run ads and I am not much on Instagram.”
Let me get to the part that DOES affect you.
With all these changes, everyone was reminded of how important it is to build your business on your OWN platform.
I am talking about publishing your content and building your authority on a blog, a podcast, and even a YouTube channel (which is not in fact, a platform you own, but works like one).
This means that everyone will get back to the basics and double down on:
- blog content (with SEO to get organic traffic from Google searches for the years to come),
- writing for top websites and publications and
- pitching themselves for podcast interviews as a way to build their authority and get organic leads.
I even know of Facebook ads agencies revamping their offers and selling podcast pitching packages for their clients at 10,000USD a pop.
So I want to share this with you: soon, the competition on organic reach marketing strategies (where you don’t have to pay to get leads and reach) will get FIERCE.
It was fierce before but it's going to get bigger.
If you were planning to do more organic marketing stuff this year, you’d better start NOW and learn to do it right.
