Occupy Social Media

When the 2% of the big publishers rock the world of the other 98% (With the Help of the Social Networks Giants)

If you have a blog, or a magazine or even if you have a business that regularly depends on social media to get the word out, you may have felt the change in the recent months.

It has been significant changes in the algorithm for the big social networks helping them to organize themselves, sharpening their pencils to count more and more profits. Besides that, the big social giant decided at the same time to embed the big Media into their platform; making impossible to those that run Indie and alternative media channels to access even the public they have grown organically throughout the years.

It is fascinating that now the page reaches of Facebook barely touch 5% of whatever amount of people you have on your page. If you want to reach your community, you can either pay the unbelievable sum of money per post on your page and still arrive at a ridiculous amount of people to see it. I am not talking about friends of friends, or by category of interest; I am talking about your own Facebook community.

So the idea that you would build a community of followers based on your own merits and by the relevance of your content now is just for the birds.

The owners of the small page need the interaction, the reach, and their voices. Notice that your posts are seen by fewer friends every day, not even inside your own feed you can send a message that would reach them all.

So how does the new embedded system inside Facebook works? Huffington Post, Buzz Feed, and others are now operating with advantage inside Facebook platform with their video, their content and their trending feature, all the special treatment and relevance they probably deserve, but at the expense of smaller but relevant niche publishers that do not have the way to compete with the new Facebook system.

My question is, why it is that the new technologies, new features and algorithm are actually shrinking the reach of the great pages inside Facebook instead of expanding it?

If I share a Post from Huffington post on my timeline, all my friends, and their friends will be able to see that post, but if I post something from my own blog, on my timeline only a very minute amount of my friends which are also friends with each other will see that post. If I do it from my business page (Certified or not), my reach falls to less than 3%.

I do understand that Facebook is a business and a big business model for what it matters, but when your strategic business plans purposely infringe the rights of other publishers to privilege a small percentage of your peers, there is something fundamentally wrong with it. It is abusive.

It is a game; one must say, but it is a game of marked cards to start with, no way to win unless you are programmed with a budget to spend copious amounts of money, every time you have an urgent message to publicize.

There is no way out, damn if you do it, damn if you don’t. I wish to see a comprehensive policy of inclusion, to niche markets, such those of alternative health, the environmental activists, Animal rescues, small nonprofits and many others. On the age of advanced knowledge and the multi-platform connections, social technology plays an important role, one of giving the people a voice, a connection, an outlet. To limit this revolutionary concept based on incessant profit is not evolution, it is not cutting edge, it is old style, old news, old ways.

Many organizations depend solely on their Social Media to maintain and expand their outreaches. But the way it is, it seems that we, the 98% are just swimming in molasses.