If you’ve noticed a dip in the organic Facebook reach on your Facebook page lately, you’ve most likely been panicking like most social media marketers around the world. It’s a well known fact that as your page grows, the organic reach (number of people a post is shown to without promotions) tends to slowly dip.
However, of late a multitude of Facebook pages have been showing massively decreasing Facebook reach stats – except for a special few. Not that there is any decline in the quality of the content on their page, it’s just Facebook playing with the newsfeed algorithm all over again.
Akin to the Dark Knight’s Joker saying, “If you’re good at something, never do it for free” – Facebook has decided to take his advice and implement it sadly, on the news feed algorithm. Given that Facebook’s good at helping brands reach out to their target audience, they aren’t going to let you do it for free any more. At least not as much as you’d like.
To increase organic Facebook reach on their Page’s posts, companies will have to completely revamp their Social Media Strategies, and invest more time and money to boost / promote their posts, to reach out to a larger audience.
According to Facebook’s new algorithm (we’ve lost track of which version this is) – Facebook displays more timely and relevant posts, which automatically shifts focus to creating unique content for Company pages on a regular basis. The idea is to present likeable / shareable content to the audience; and avoid being a ‘blink n miss’ or being ‘scrolled down’ at.
Mostly, we observe people sharing images/ statuses/ videos/ links on their walls, thereby increasing ‘that’ page’s reach.
Publishing houses such as the Daily Mail, the Independent have seen a vast increase in their page’s organic Facebook reach, given that Facebook’s newsfeed is now going to focus on more news. Frankly – this seems like a very bad idea.
Facebook has clearly stated on its company blog – “Ultimately, what’s good for people on Facebook is good for the businesses that use Facebook to reach and engage them. One of the ways we maintain a good balance between the two is by making sure News Feed is as interesting and timely as possible.”
Facebook might as well come out and say, “We’re going to show your posts to 5% of the people who have liked your page, and if you’d like more people to see it – throw some money at us.”
Is this fair? Probably not. Companies have vested money, time and effort into making sure that thousands of people like their pages and stay up to date with their content, only to have Facebook strip them of the right of showcasing the content that they’ve previously asked for to be shown on their newsfeed.
The only hope we have as community managers is that the next newsfeed update (which will probably happen in the next four minutes) – brings with it change that reverses this experiment.
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