MASTERING META ALGORITHMS FOR BUSINESS GROWTH! Navah Hopkins on Boosting Content Engagement

Summary

Podcast Summary: Small Business Quick WINS w/ Jay Schwedelson Presented By Thryv

Episode Title: MASTERING META ALGORITHMS FOR BUSINESS GROWTH! Navah Hopkins on Boosting Content Engagement
Release Date: February 27, 2025
Host: Jay Schwedelson
Guest: Navah Hopkins

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Introduction

In this insightful episode of Small Business Quick WINS, host Jay Schwedelson welcomes back returning guest Navah Hopkins, an evangelist for Optimizer and an international speaker specializing in marketing topics, particularly pay-per-click strategies. The episode delves deep into understanding and leveraging Meta's algorithms—crucial for businesses aiming to enhance their online presence on platforms like Facebook and Instagram.

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Understanding Meta's Organic Reach Limitations

Key Discussion: Navah Hopkins begins by highlighting the significant reduction in organic reach on Facebook, noting that up to 90% of organic content is often filtered out or suppressed by the platform's algorithm. Consequently, businesses typically reach only 3-7% of their organic audience without employing paid strategies.

Notable Quote:

Navah Hopkins [03:34]: "There's a really unfortunate mechanic of Facebook in particular, where I believe the current threshold is 90%. It might have gone up to 90.7%, of organic content is just filtered out or stifled."

Insights:

• Algorithm Challenges: Meta's algorithms prioritize content that generates immediate engagement, making it challenging for new or less engaged businesses to gain visibility organically.
• Solution via Groups: To combat this, Navah emphasizes the importance of joining and actively participating in relevant Facebook groups. By sharing valuable content within these communities, businesses can bypass algorithmic suppression and achieve higher engagement rates.

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Strategies to Enhance Content Circulation

Key Discussion: Navah outlines actionable strategies to increase content visibility despite Meta's restrictive algorithms:

1. Joining Relevant Groups: Identify and become active in three to five groups related directly or tangentially to your business. Authentic participation builds trust and authority, facilitating greater content sharing within these communities.

2. Engagement: Encourage early engagement within the first few minutes of posting. This includes likes, comments, and shares, signaling to the algorithm that the content is valuable and should reach a broader audience.

3. Buddy System: Establish a network of trusted contacts who can engage with your content promptly. This initial boost can significantly enhance visibility across Meta platforms.

Notable Quote:

Navah Hopkins [05:03]: "Find three to five groups that are either directly related to your business or at least tangentially related. Join them, be honest and transparent about who you are and build up the trust and authority to share content there."

Insights:

• Content Authenticity: Sharing valuable, non-promotional content fosters genuine engagement, which is favored by Meta's algorithms.
• Avoiding Solicitation: Distinguishing between useful content and direct solicitation is crucial to prevent being flagged or removed from groups.

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Crafting Engaging Content

Key Discussion: The conversation shifts to the format and style of content that resonates best with audiences and aligns with Meta's algorithms:

1. Be Human and Authentic: Authenticity builds long-term credibility. While negative or dramatic content may garner higher immediate engagement, maintaining a consistent and genuine brand voice is essential for sustained growth.

2. Content Hooks: Effective hooks that highlight the utility and relevance of the content significantly increase engagement. For example, offering interactive elements like quizzes or challenges can drive higher participation.

3. Consistency: Regular posting schedules help audiences anticipate and engage with new content, reinforcing visibility and algorithmic favorability.

Notable Quote:

Navah Hopkins [10:45]: "Be human. ... it's important that you are authentic to your brand."

Insights:

• Positive vs. Negative Engagement: While negativity can spike engagement temporarily, it may harm brand reputation. Balancing authenticity with positive interactions is key.
• Interactive Content: Encouraging audiences to interact with content through questions or challenges can enhance engagement metrics that algorithms prioritize.

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Optimal Timing for Posting

Key Discussion: Timing plays a pivotal role in maximizing content visibility. Navah provides strategic advice on when to post for optimal engagement:

1. Best Times to Post: Between 8 AM and 11 AM in the target audience's time zone. This window captures active users while accommodating different time zones.

2. Avoiding Low Engagement Days: Fridays and weekends typically see lower engagement rates. Instead, focusing on mid-week days like Thursdays can yield better results.

3. Consistency is Key: Maintaining a regular posting schedule helps the algorithm recognize and anticipate content, improving overall reach and engagement.

Notable Quote:

Navah Hopkins [13:46]: "The best time to post is between 8 and 11 AM in the time zone that I'm reaching because that will give enough people active time with the content."

Insights:

• Audience Activity: Understanding when your specific audience is most active ensures higher engagement rates.
• Avoiding Sporadic Posting: Irregular posting schedules can confuse the algorithm and reduce content visibility.

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Leveraging Platform Features

Key Discussion: Navah emphasizes the importance of utilizing platform-specific features to boost engagement:

1. Follow Encouragement: Encourage customers to follow your business profiles, possibly incentivizing with gift cards or discounts. Unlike reviews, following is less regulated and can organically increase your audience base.

2. Engagement Signals: Explicitly asking your audience to like, share, and comment on your posts provides clear signals to the algorithm about the desirability of your content.

Notable Quote:

Navah Hopkins [10:15]: "Tell your customers that you need them to follow you or that you'll give a gift card or a discount for follows because there aren't as strict rules about follows as there are for reviews."

Insights:

• Incentivizing Engagement: Offering rewards for follows can effectively grow your follower base, enhancing content reach.
• Clear CTAs: Direct calls-to-action (CTAs) guide audiences on how to interact with your content, improving engagement metrics.

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Final Thoughts and Personal Insights

Towards the end of the episode, Jay and Navah briefly discuss Navah's personal interests in gaming, highlighting how strategic thinking and engagement in games like Magic the Gathering and Risk parallel effective marketing strategies. Although this segment deviates from the core topic, it underscores the importance of strategic planning and engagement—qualities essential both in gaming and business.

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Conclusion

This episode provides small business owners with a comprehensive understanding of Meta's algorithms and practical strategies to enhance content engagement on Facebook and Instagram. By leveraging relevant groups, fostering authentic interactions, optimizing posting times, and utilizing platform features, businesses can navigate algorithmic challenges and achieve significant growth in their online presence.

Key Takeaways:

• Join and Engage in Relevant Groups: Builds trust and amplifies content reach.
• Foster Early Engagement: Boosts content visibility through algorithmic favor.
• Maintain Authenticity: Ensures long-term credibility and sustained growth.
• Optimize Posting Times: Aligns content release with audience activity for maximum impact.
• Utilize Platform Features: Enhances follower base and engagement through strategic actions.

For more actionable tips and insights, listeners are encouraged to subscribe to Small Business Quick WINS and implement the strategies discussed to drive remarkable business growth.

Transcript

[A]

Just want to jump in here real quick and let you know that this podcast is exclusively presented by Thrive. Thrive is an amazing tool that small businesses, thousands of small businesses leverage to run their business in so many ways. And they have this incredible thing called Marketing Center. Now, if you're not familiar with Marketing center from Thrive, great news. For the start of the year, they're doing a special offer right here of a 25% off discount of their Thrive Marketing Center. This thing allows you to run all your ads, boost your online presence, understand all of your customer interactions, and if you want to check this out and get this discount, it is super easy. All you got to do is go to thrive.com that's t h r y v dot com wins. That's thrive th r y v dot com slash wins. And I'm telling you, your marketing is at the center of your business. It what, it's what drives your business. So check out Marketing center from Thrive [e-mail] wins. Welcome to Small Business Quick Wins, presented by Thrive. This podcast is exclusively designed for small business leaders like you. Prepare to get invaluable insights from every episode, equipped with actionable tips made for immediate implementation in your business. Tune in as we feature firsthand lessons from fellow small business owners and thought leaders. I'm your host, Jay Schwedelson. Over the last 25 years, I've grown multiple small businesses that have generated over $300 million in revenue. Along the way, I've learned pitfalls to avoid and quick wins that can transform your business immediately. I'm excited to share it all. So if you're ready to win on Main street, let's dig into this episode. We are back for Small Business Quick Wins, presented by Thrive. And you know what? We have a return guest. Why? Because Nava Hopkins is awesome. She was on here talking about all things search engine marketing, pay per click marketing, and afterwards I was like, what else do you know about? And she was breaking down how algorithms work on some of the big networks, the big platforms, and how to get your content circulated. I'm like, nava, you got to come back on. By the way, who is Nava? First off, she is an evangelist for Optimizer, which is amazing. She's an international speaker and instructor on all different marketing topics, especially pay per click stuff. She's a rescue dog mom. She's a metalhead. She is a gamer. She is wild. So, Nava, welcome to the show.

[B]

I am so grateful to be back and I am really appreciative of you carving out time and your amazing, amazing content schedule with all, all the amazing things that you cover to talk about algorithms, because it's a topic that I think really needs more transparency. So just any opportunity to talk about algorithms is always a delight.

[A]

All right, so here's what we're going to do. We're going to peel back the COVID or whatever especially. I want to start first with Meta. As we all know, Meta owns Instagram, they own Facebook, amongst other things. And sometimes you put out content and you're like, oh, I work so hard on this content, whatever it is, and it goes nowhere. It just becomes a dud. And for all the small business owners out there or marketers that are out there, what are they doing wrong? What don't they understand about the algorithm? How do you get your stuff to circulate on, on meta stuff, Instagram and Facebook in particular.

[B]

So there's a really unfortunate mechanic of Facebook in particular, where I believe the current threshold is 90. It might have gone up to 90.7percent of organic content is just filtered out or stifled. So you're only going to reach anywhere between, what is it, 3 to 7% of your organic audience without boosting posts. The catch to this, and there's a really good workaround, are the our groups and finding groups of like minded people. Because when you post into groups, you are using their natural desire to share information to find out information. And those alerts tend to serve in feeds before unaffiliated content. So my number one, if you take nothing else away from this conversation, a bit of advice is to find three to five groups that are either directly related to your business or at least tangentially related. Join them, be honest and transparent about who you are and build up the trust and authority to share content there, because that will get you so much more reach and engagement than sharing it blindly.

[A]

But let me ask you a question about that. I'm curious. I joined a group, okay. Now I'm a small real estate company. Okay.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I join, you know, whatever. I live in Boca Raton, Florida. It's the Boca Raton family group or whatever.

[B]

Do you actually live in Boca? I lived in Boca for like nine years. Oh, hilarious. That's so weird.

[A]

We have to, we have to go deep on that. So now I'm joining that group as this real estate person and I've put together some sort of piece of content like, like an asset about prices and home values, whatever. And can I just post that in the group or is the group organizer like. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, Solicitation. Here. No, Whatever. How do you actually do that in a group without getting your hand slapped?

[B]

So it does depend on the group. So, for example, there's a group that I'm a part of. It's Kennels for Sale or Kennel Real Real Estate, because my dream is to one day open a big dog pot of land. And so I'm my aspirational piece. So there are groups where the whole point is to find those opportunities. So if you join a group where that's the point, of course, it's expected that there will be posts of useful content. And what you just described isn't a solicitation. It sounds like a really useful bit of content. So if you're putting together, like, here's the trends on prices, what do you think? That's very different than, I have this house for sale, come to my open house. Right. There's a difference there. But what I want to make sure we, we do cover when it comes to the algorithm and how people will see content versus not when a bit of content in its first 5 to 10 minutes of engagement or not 5, 10 minutes of 5, 10 minutes of being posted gets high engagement. That means that there's emotes, that means that there's comments, that means that there's shares, that means the user lingers on it for more than just the millisecond to scroll past. That is a signal to the algorithm that this content might be interesting and useful to more people, like the person who emoted or commented or engaged. So the best thing you can do when you're launching a bit of content, if it's not in a group or if you're nervous about getting your hand slapped, is to have your buddy system of five to 10 people who, when you want to put something out, you send them the link and say, hey, would you mind giving this a. Like, hey, would you mind giving this a share? Do you mind engaging with this? This is something that I do all the time for my content. People ask it of me all the time. It is 100% okay. You are not breaking any rules, you're not violating any laws. You're not going against the system to have people in your back pocket that you love and that you trust who like the content. The catch to this is that you can't like your own content like that. That's going to do nothing other than make you look foolish. So the takeaway to that point is find your buddies now, Nava. I have no friends. I'm a, I'm a Friendless noob who's just entering and I don't know what to do. Fair then what's really helpful is to start looking for content that is similar to what you want to post about or what you want to start to build clout about and comment and engage with those people. Gaining the top fan badge for any group or engaging with someone whose ego and or paycheck depends upon getting engagement is a surefire way to ensure that you start getting attention. One of my favorite favorite things that that's happened not on meta but on LinkedIn, is that I'll get people reaching out to me to have me go do more public speaking or work what have you. Maybe a five, ten minute post that I'll put up, but that happened because I consistently engaged. So this kind of step number two to this is always show up. We're talking a little bit more about how to make money off of the algorithm and less about how the algorithm. So I do want to make sure we focus on that third piece, which is users who like or give the feedback that yes, they want to see more of this sort of content or say no, I don't want to see this content or no, I block it, blah blah blah. It is very helpful to tell people what you want them to do. So one thing I've actually found very helpful when I'm running social programs is I will tell people to like and subscribe to say yes, they want to hear about more from me. Be very specific about what you want because the more you're able to actually give that feedback, the more this the system will take that and show it to people who say they want to hear from you or show less of you to the people who say they want to hear less from you.

[A]

So okay, now I get it. I know I got to interact, I got to get my buddy system going. But now I got my piece of whatever my post I want to do. And what is the right format? Should I be posting a picture when I write the words with the post? Is it better to have a handful of words or should I write a really long verbose thing? What should I actually be posting that's going to give me the best shot with the algorithm? Or is it just about whatever I post? It's got to get engagement.

[B]

Be human. There is an unfortunate mechanic that negativity does tend to get more engagement than positivity. I've done this in a number of different little anecdotal tests where I'll say the same thing one day in a very positive way and it gets sort of lukewarm response and then I say it in a sort of dramatic, scandalous way and everyone picks it up. People like drama, people like negativity, but that doesn't build long term credibility and trust. So it is important that you are human and authentic to your brand. It's also very, very important that you are mindful that when people write whatever comments they do on your post, just because there's a whole bunch of comments doesn't mean that it's positive because your brand could get panned for being insensitive. So the that is an important piece, but the other important piece is the hook that you use in your content. So when you said I have this piece of content I want to put together and it's pricing for real estate, that to me is super interesting. Everyone should be interested in that. And that's interesting. Not just in a real estate question. That's also interesting in an education play. It's interesting in a finance environment. It's interesting in a marketing environment. Like there's a lot of use cases for that being interesting. So when you create content, you have to kind of back yourself and know that the content you're creating is useful and helpful. One bit of content actually I found hilarious and this is something important is kind of a warning to people I put into ChatGPT. How do Google audiences work? Or how do the different audiences function in GPT or in Google Ads? And GPT came back with 14 errors. I posted that post verbatim and at the bottom I said this is a trick post. This is an AI post. Can you count the errors or can you find all the errors? And I'll give away a free consulting call to whoever could find the most errors. That post got more engagement than a post. I spent seven hours on detailing every single little detail about the actual audiences. Like there. It's just you need to be mindful that certain words, certain trends are going to always have more volume. But the actual utility of those posts is hit or miss. You want to be consistent and you want to be human.

[A]

Wow, that's amazing. It's so true though, especially in this world of garbage and sameness and AI tidal wave of useless genericness. I totally agree. Being humans, everything. So let me ask you one final topic. Is there a right day or a right time of day to be posting to really jump on the algorithm train?

[B]

So it depends on where your market is. So I find that the best time to post is between 8 and 11am in the time or in the time zone that I care, I'm reaching because that will give enough people active time with the content and it will also allow for different time zones to latch onto it. It's also important to note that there is certain days that are just the worst. Like if you post anything on a Friday, don't expect good engagement. If you post anything on a weekend, that's not an adorable puppy, like you're not going to get good engagement. If you post on a Thursday consistently, that could be your day. If you post on a Monday and then you go two weeks without posting and then you post on a Thursday, you should not expect good engagement. So you want to kind of think of your posting as a channel that your audience can regularly anticipate content from you. So for example, on blue sky, I just throw up content willy nilly. I just, I end, I get willy nilly engagement. I have yet to get my blue sky in a really meaningful place. Whereas on LinkedIn my audience knows that they can expect from me one really thoughtful piece every day. It'll be at different times depending on what happens, but it's usually between that 8 and 11am for my main time, which is Eastern, so New York time, Boca time. But they also know that they can expect as is needed content from me throughout the day. So the big long piece, once it's seen, it tends to get engagement. And LinkedIn has built in alert systems. So does Meta, so does Instagram of the people that you follow. So tell your customers that you need them to follow you or that you'll give a gift card or a discount for follows because there aren't as strict rules about follows as there are for reviews. You can get your Google business profile suspended by paying for reviews. It's a much cleaner or it's a much not cleaner, it's a much more gray system for. For follows.

[A]

I love that. Those are excellent advice. All right, before we wrap up, I have a question for you. You said that you're a gamer. Does that mean you're playing like Call of Duty or Fortnite or what Embarrassment or Assassin's Creed? Like what are we playing?

[B]

So I play a lot of Magic the Gathering, which is a card game. I played quite a bit of Baldur's Gate 3, played the Divinity games, play Witcher, Mass Effect, Dragon Age. There was a period where I was a guild lead in the Star Wars MMO swtor. But at my heart I'm a solo gamer. I play games for stories. But yeah, it's. I like fun challenges and I like playing against people that I know are better at the game than I am so that I can make myself better. And fun fact, whenever I hire someone or I'm training someone in marketing, I'll make them play board games with me. Because the easiest way to train someone to think like a marketer is to get them to play and win at a board game. And there's no real money was lost in this experiment at Risk.

[A]

So is that the game you play? Risk? Is that the board game you play?

[B]

I'll play Risk a little bit, but more Viticulture. Clink. There's a really great one. Nemesis my buddy turned me on to.

[A]

I know the game. Sorry. Life Checkers, Chutes and Ladders. Does that count?

[B]

No, it definitely does. It definitely does.

[A]

Very good at shoots and ladders. Well, this has been amazing and unfortunately you'll never actually learn anything from me gaming because I don't know how to do anything. Not just in gaming in general, but you do. And we're gonna put all in the show notes so everyone could find out everything about Nava Hopkins world. So now. But tell everybody. How do they follow you? How do they connect with you? What do they do? We're gonna put it all in there, but just tell everybody.

[B]

Connect with me on bluesky on LinkedIn I do a monthly column for Search Engine Journal, a quarterly one for Search Engine Land. I also regularly contribute to the Optimizer blog. You can always connect with me on the Women in Tech, SEO, the PPC chat, and the Paid Search Association Slack channels. And if anyone has a Discord and wants to chat on Discord, I will happily answer questions on Discord. But BlueSky and LinkedIn are probably a safer bet for serious marketing stuff.

[A]

Amazing. I love it. All right, well, this has been awesome. We're gonna put everything in the show notes. I've learned a ton. Nava, thanks for being here.

[B]

Thank you for having me. Cheers, Jay.

[A]

Well, that was fun and great news. We got way more where that came from. Subscribe. Make sure you get the latest episode each week for more actionable tips from today's top small business leaders. And hook us up with a five star review if you've got at least one new idea you may consider using. Lastly, if you to ensure you never miss a message from your customers Again, check out Thrive.comWin to get your free account with Demand center today.