Refreshing Your Facebook Friends List

Have you noticed that you aren’t getting the same amount of engagement on Facebook? It is not just you, organic engagement is down for everyone. Over the last year engagement has gone down 33% and continues to decline. We are seeing shifts in the newsfeed to more video-based content and that is where our engagement is going. More and more social media platforms are switching to this type of content and we need change with it!

You have to pay to play.

The reason engagement is down is because Facebook has become very much pay-to-play. Every couple of posts you’re seeing in your newsfeed are actually advertisements. They fit in beautifully so a lot of times you might not even notice it and just view them as a post from a business or someone you follow. These platforms make so much room for paid advertising that organic content is being pushed out. Ads aren’t a bad thing, they can actually be really useful for business growth, but to combat the negative aspect of them… you need to change a few things with your social media strategy.

Become a marketer or a better one.

Marketers have a leg up over others, it is your job to learn how to create organic, original content and how to write posts in a way where you’re not just writing about yourself. If you don’t know how to do that, it is time you become really good at it. I have tons of trainings on YouTube that you can check out to help you become an amazing marketer. You can find videos about engagement, meeting the algorithm, and so many other tips and tricks. But for now- keep on reading because I am going to teach you how to get back in the driver’s seat and how to get your engagement back to a healthy amount!

Let’s beat the algorithm.

The best way to beat the algorithm and boost your engagement is through your friends list. The biggest mistake I see from online marketers is that they are not building their audience. If you want more eyes on your social media, you need to be getting in front of new people. You need to be forming new friendships and focusing on the individuals that will actively engage with your content.

Let’s say you have 2,000 people on your friends list or you have capped out at 5,000, more or less than a third of those friends most likely aren’t active. They aren’t engaging with your content and unless it’s people you have whitelisted, you don’t need them. That isn’t meant to sound harsh but if they aren’t engaging with your content, then you need to find people who will. The more friends you have who don’t engage will ultimately lower your algorithm rating. For the health of your account you need to find people who will engage. There are 1.49 billion daily active users on Facebook, that’s over a billion potential friends. On top of that, Facebook adds 500,000 new users every day; 6 new profiles every second. Your target audience is out there, you just have to find them.

Let’s start scrubbing.

Your engagement is down, you want to reach a new audience, the next step is to scrub your current Facebook friends list. You can scrub your list yourself or you can hire someone else to do it. When you start scrubbing, you are going to be looking for inactives. Which friends on your list haven’t engaged with your content in the last 6 months? Scrubbing can take a lot of time so I recommend hiring someone. I use Paladino Marketing and their rates are affordable. They will audit your friends list and they give you a report on all the accounts that haven’t been active with your content. Then, the next step is unfriending these people! You can either do it yourself or have Paladino Marketing reps unfriend all the accounts on the compiled list. As a result, your friends list will have more room to add people who will be active and will boost your algorithm rating.

Facebook wants friendships.

Everytime you gain a new friend on Facebook they show your content to that person. Imagine if you gain 10 new friends a day, that is 50 a week, that’s 200 a month. You could have 200 new friends seeing your content and engaging with it. If you need help figuring out the type of person you need to friend, you can check out my Youtube channel or check out my target audience hack!

Keep building a new audience and creating organic content people want to engage with. This is your key to growing engagement on Facebook! It will be worth it in the end, Goal Digger!

If you enjoyed this post and want to consume it in video form, check out my Youtube Training Clean up Your FB Friends List NOW to Grow Your Following.