How Facebook’s Algorithm Affects Your Driver Recruitment

 

If you have a Facebook fan page, we want to give you a heads up on recent changes that will affect your brand. For those companies who use Facebook marketing to recruit drivers, take a look to learn more about Facebook’s News Feed Ranking Algorithm.

Your Recruiting Posts Aren’t Reaching All of Your Fans

If you use Facebook as a means to publish recruiting-type posts, you may assume these posts are being seen in the News Feed by all of your Facebook fans. This is not the case. In fact, very few fans are seeing them. Let’s explain…

Facebook marketing experts say that there are around 1,500 stories that could be shown to a Facebook user in their News Feed at any moment. As Facebook grows and mobile has made it easier for brands and users alike to make posts, the number of posts shared on the platform has drastically risen. As that number continues to grow, Facebook has the tough job of choosing what to show users. Since there’s only a certain amount of space in users’ News Feeds and an abundance of posts, not every post will make into the News Feed. The result? Your posts aren’t being seen as often as they were in the past. To put it in social media speak: Facebook organic reach is declining.

How This Affects Your Recruiting

If you’re wondering what the term “organic reach” means and how this affects your driver recruiting, we’ve got you covered. Organic reach is the total number of unique people who are shown your posts through unpaid distribution. If you aren’t using paid Facebook ad campaigns and posting to your page in an effort to recruit truck drivers, only a very small percentage of your fan base is actually seeing it.

Recent reports say Facebook has admitted organic reach for brands is declining. Facebook openly states that fan page owners should expect their organic reach to continue to decline over time. As Facebook continues to grow, organic reach will continue to fall. Take a look at this chart from Social@Ogilvy:

Organic-Reach-ChartAccording to a Social@Ogilvy analysis of more than 100 brand pages, by early 2014 organic reach hovered at 6 percent. In addition, Facebook sources were unofficially advising brand page owners to expect it to approach zero in the foreseeable future.

This shift certainly affects your driver recruiting on Facebook but don’t be too alarmed–your page is still valuable and there are effective ways to counteract this change.

Why Your Facebook Page Is Still Valuable

Though it might feel the decline in organic reach is working against you, there are still plenty of benefits to having a Facebook page. Without a page for your brand, you’ll lose the opportunity to give a place for drivers and prospective drivers to interact with you, run contests, post photos, and see detailed analytics of how people are interacting with your page. In addition, the Facebook likes you currently have now are still beneficial. Users respond more positively to brands on Facebook that their friends have liked. That said, followers should not be a brand’s sole focus. Your social media goals shouldn’t just put a spotlight on the number of fans, but should focus on an effective social media presence for loyal drivers and potential drivers.

How You Can Counteract Facebook’s Algorithm Changes

To continue building your audience and engagement, we suggest creating a Facebook ad campaign, particularly, sponsored ads in News Feed. This is the #1 way to counteract the decline in reach and increase your impressions. Creating sponsored ad campaigns dramatically improves your reach and allows your stories to show up in your targeted audiences’ News Feed.

You can be clever in the way your company creates advertising campaigns to get the most out of your goals. For example, promote your posts in the News Feed that will show up to fans AND non-fans of your Facebook page. Take advantage of Facebook’s demographic data to recruit drivers carefully, rather than spending your budget showing posts to users who aren’t interested in driving, trucking, or looking to make a career move. You can set parameters such as age, location, gender, interests, behavior, and more. Ask yourself: Where are my hiring zones? Am I looking for recent graduates or experienced drivers? What is my buyer persona? In other words, what is a typical truck driver interested in and what are their hobbies? This is a great way to zone in on your audience. After creating your ad, your Facebook posts will show up in your target audiences’ News Feed, sending traffic and engagement to your page.

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Click here to create an ad campaign.

This popular social network has changed but continues to be a valued driver recruitment tool. Brands on Facebook simply need to understand how to take advantage of these changes and consider alternatives to reach truck drivers, such as Facebook sponsored ads.

Interested in learning more or guidance on creating your first ad campaign? Contact the Hightower Agency hereSome of our other offerings include: geotargetingbloggingcreating call-to-actions, data miningsearch engine marketingcreation of landing pagesdeveloping responsive websites, radio advertising, remarketingemail marketingGoogle AdWords and various types of PPC campaigns, creation of mobile sites, ad campaigns, publication ads, brochures, Internet placement, newspaper placement, ad copy, website redesign and more.

Click below to see how you can retarget drivers on Facebook:

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