Decreasing Facebook Organic Reach: What You Need to Know ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We all know the power of social media traffic, and Facebook’s in particular. Building an engaged fan base on Facebook is a great way to interact with your most die-hard followers, increase website traffic and (hopefully) sales. But recent changes in the Facebook organic reach algorithms could have big effects on your website’s traffic and your social media. How It All Works Just like in the search engine world, there is paid and organic traffic on social media platforms like Facebook. You can pay for ads to be displayed in front of your target audience (whether they are your fans or not) and you can also get interactions (likes, clicks, website visits) from free or organic posts you make. Just like SEO, organic posts are gold when they work well and go viral. You post something awesome, your fans see it, engage with it, their friends see it, become fans and the circle of social media life goes on and on. But Facebook doesn’t blast out every single one of your posts to all of your audience. If they did that, timelines would be so active that everyone would easily miss posts from friends and family because of business posts. Can you imagine missing a video of your nieces first steps because the Jiffy Lube page you liked two years ago to get a 10% discount on your oil change pushed it out of view on your timeline? There would be riots in the streets! That is why Facebook uses algorithms to decide which posts would interest its users the most and whether they should be displayed in your timeline. The more you interact with a person, page or group the more likely you are to see their stuff. From the page perspective, the more your fans engage with your content, the more people see it. The New Rules But now Facebook is adding some tweaks to its algorithms. When a page’s posts are “too promotional,” it will not push that post out to a lot of your fans. If content is too salesy, or pushes the fan to buy something, enter a contest, install an app or something along those lines, then Facebook will restrict how many users get to see it. According to AdAge: A Facebook spokeswoman said the companys algorithm will evaluate these promotional posts with the same filters it puts on ads — checking, for example, how many people engage with or hide them — when determining whether to let them into peoples news feeds. Why the Change? The most obvious answer as to why these rules have been tweaked is because Facebook likes money. Its a public company with stockholders and Wall Street to answer to. They need to show revenue growth in line with projects or the stock suffers. Hey, all of those Mark Zuckerberg hoodies aren’t going to buy themselves… By restricting the organic deployment of these promotional posts Facebook is telling advertisers that they can still push this kind of content but they are going to have to pay to play. Beyond the dollars and cents side of this, there is also a user experience angle to look at. Promotional posts usually suck. You’re on Facebook to engage with friends and family and some page is hocking their wares in your timeline. Maybe it’s the greatest deal in the world but if you’re not in that mindset then that post goes from pure gold to mud on the bottom of your shoe. By making promotional posts less effective and forcing those who want to run them to pay for an ad, Facebook hopes to limit the number of these posts in general and give its user a better experience. Why This Shouldn’t Phase You Are your eyes are welling up with tears? Are you getting ready to scream, “It’s not fair! Those are my fans they should get to see every single thing I post! Facebook is screwing the small business/marketer to make more money!”? If so, then I’m going to need you to go sit in the corner over there with all of the SEOs who are mad at Big Bad Google for changing its search algorithms and “forcing” marketers to turn to paid advertising. Fair has nothing to do with any of this. It’s like my Grandma always said: “Fare is what you pay to ride the bus.” Facebook and Google make the rules and if you want to play in their sandboxes, you have to follow those rules. Stop whining on forums and spend that time writing better content or creating a killer ad campaign. And you really shouldn’t have been dependent on this type of content in the first place. Social media and Facebook are all about creating engagement by offering valuable content and, if you’re lucky, forming a community around your brand. If all you did was bombard your fans with sales promotions, then I’m shocked you have any fans at all. Could you imagine being at a party and right after you are introduced to someone they proceed to try and sell you something? You politely excuse yourself but every time you run into them, they are pressuring you to buy something again. Yup, it’s just as annoying and anti-social online. Don’t let these changes phase you by continuing to create solid, valuable content that your fans will want to engage with. If you have a promotion to run or want to get a little salesy (hey, we all have to keep the lights on, right?) that’s fine. Create an ad campaign and target only fans of your page. That way you limit your ad costs by targeting only those people on Facebook who have shown some interest in you. Have you noticed a drop in your organic reach on Facebook? Have you had to alter your social media marketing strategy because of it? bit.ly/1uav2rq
Posted on: Mon, 19 Jan 2015 07:36:09 +0000
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