In 2013 our fan base doubled and individual posts had a perfectly normal reach. The reach of company related updates (news about a new store opening or promotions) didn’t differ that much from updates we know to be appreciated by our fans (info about new Apple products, simple tips and tricks, a picture of a cat and a Mac — “because everybody loves cats”). Off course the latter had a higher reach, but nothing really significant.

In the beginning of 2014 Facebook’s update to its News Feed algorithm changed all this. And all because they now focus on interaction. The algorithm is based on several factors, including:

• how often a user interacts with your Page
• the number of likes, shares and comments your post receives
• how often a user has interacted with this type of post in the past

I noticed the second one is an important one: the reach of our posts increases incremently when users start interacting.

In the past company related updates got a few likes and reached a fine number of people. Nothing to cheer about, but it was okay. Now these posts get no interaction at all, and their reach often stays about 40% below the reach we used to have. Our fans don’t get to see these posts in their News Feed so they don’t interact with them and other users don’t see them either.

Popular updates now reach about 60% more people than they did before. This is great! It’s just that these popular posts are not the ones that are important to us. Great content for our fans, but no added value for us.