Freelance marketing consultant, author and social media manager Martina Mercer explains the recent changes to Facebook and how you can overcome them

Small to medium enterprises using Facebook for business are worried as customers are now telling them they’re not seeing their updates in their news feeds.

While small businesses are, themselves, noticing a huge drop in the amount of people who like their posts.

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Facebook knows its platform performed at its peak when friends and family shared all their moments and communicated with each other regularly.

This is why they constantly remind you of memories, as they want to take Facebook back to the beginning, where people would post personal updates and upload albums of pictures at a time.

The problem is, there’s now a lot of advertising on Facebook and most is monetised. This means it can never be what it once was, but this doesn’t stop Facebook from trying, so here is what they’re doing.

What are the changes?

Facebook is now showing content to people they believe will engage the most.

In short, if you’ve not loved (a like isn’t enough), commented on, or shared a post from a friend or a brand, the chances are that friend, or business, will gradually disappear from your news feed.

Facebook feels this will create more meaningful interactions, and maybe it will, but it’s leaving a lot of businesses floundering.

How can you combat the change?

The solution would be easy if we all had thousands of pounds to spend on advertising, as investing heavily in Facebook boosts and adverts would make sure your content is seen.

As the advertising platform is still so unpredictable, and as small businesses don’t have money to burn, we need to find other ways. Here’s four top tips of how you can make sure your posts are seen

• Go Live

Videos, especially live videos, are performing better than ever on Facebook and this type of content will be prioritised over regular pictures and status updates. (Folake Bee explains why videos are important in social media)

So if you haven’t gone live yet, consider it or make some short videos for your feed.

• Engage followers

It may be easier said than done, but to show up in a news feed you need to engage your followers.

They need to love, to share, to comment, these actions are gold dust.

Publish posts that start conversations, discussions and friendly debates.

Add personality, show an identity behind the business.

Create posts people will want to share, whether it’s a fact, a gif, a meme, something amusing.

• Make conversation

Try to answer people in real time, through messages and in comments, at least for now (this isn’t sustainable forever, we need to sleep).

Reply to comments, leave information for further reading, keep the conversation flowing.

• Make plans

On top of this make sure your content marketing plan is on point.

From blogs to videos, to posts and updates, have a clear strategy and stick to it as best you can to keep a constant stream of content on your social media channels.

Above all don’t give up, loyal followers can become your mini ambassadors, helping you to reach new people all the time.