Facebook is Where Your Customers Are, But Can You Reach Them? The Rise and Decline of Organic Facebook Reach
All of us today use social media marketing to promote our businesses, and already know the importance of Facebook. It can be considered as one of the best avenues available to get the business noticed among potential audiences. There are roughly about 60 million business / brand accounts active on Facebook, of which only 4 million are active advertisers. Unfortunately for them, the Facebook page admins have been experiencing a decline in the Facebook organic reach starting from 2012. Since then Facebook has famously started to restrict the organic reach of content to almost 16% in 2012. By 2014, the reach went as low as 6%, with a decline of about 49% in just 2 years. In 2018, it is anticipated that Facebook might reduce organic reach to less than 2%. At the current rate, it is only a matter of time Facebook Pages are sure to hit a Zero Reach (organic) figure. As a result, of this the engagement ratio of brand pages are on a decline too, with average interactions per post, per brand, per 1,000 followers, has gone down by more than 8%.
It is thus becoming increasingly important for all marketers to focus on appropriate strategies to outsmart the negative consequences created.
So, why has Facebook reach has declined along with time?
Before we go around looking for strategies on how to outsmart the negative consequences, we need to have a clear understanding as to why Facebook has been declining organic reach over time. The concept of Fan Pages came out in 2007. Since then, businesses started using Facebook fan pages in order to promote the products or services they to offer. However, page admins noticed that the number of people who see their posts kept reducing along with time. One of the most significant changes in the Facebook algorithm took place in 2016. Facebook page admins experienced a reduction of 52% of organic traffic. When lesser people can see the posts you upload, you are sure to get a lower number of shares, comments and clicks.
But why does Facebook intentionally reduce organic reach for pages? It is primarily because Facebook wants to provide better content to its users at all times. Due to the effectiveness associated with fan pages, more and more businesses started using it. On an average, there are more than 300 million content uploaded on Facebook, by individuals and brand pages combined. Facebook then came up with an effective method so that its users are not overwhelmed with the amount of content generated each day. Thus started the decline of organic reach with changes in the algorithm.
As per the current algorithm of Facebook, the users only see the best content available. In addition, people are only provided with relevant content. As a result, individuals don’t get overwhelmed with the content that they are presented via Facebook.
Some of the content publishers have cracked the Facebook algorithm. For example, they go ahead with broadcasting videos because it receives more priority by the social media network. However, one should keep in mind that such methods are not in a position to deliver long lasting results.
How to Keep Getting Noticed?
Creating Targeted and Relevant Content
As mentioned earlier, Facebook is now looking forward to provide targeted content to its users. Therefore, it is very important to be selective about the posts that are uploaded. No longer is quantity more important than quality. Targeted content, which matches perfectly well with the targeted audiences, is the need of the hour. If your organization does not have a clear understanding on how to create such posts, a proper research should be conducted. The time you spend on the research can provide you with amazing results in the long run.
Share engaging videos
Facebook is now prioritizing videos more than any other type of content on their platform. This can be seen with the introduction of Live Video in 2015, which sadly only a very few brands have made use of and Facebook In-Video Ads introduced in 2017. If it is user encouragement you’re looking at, go ahead and publish engaging videos, instead of uploading textual posts or images. From one of the recently conducted studies, it has been identified that native videos are in a position to increase user engagement by 186%.
Paid Promotions are the Way Forward
Whether we like it or not, paid promotions are here to stay. At least for a while. Facebook is on its way to implementing a Pay to Play format in 2018 with its Explore rollout. Paid promotions are thus becoming an essential part of developing effective social media strategies. With the ever increasing amount of new content generated each day on Facebook, it is highly unlikely that all the posts of a brand will be visible to their audience. It is no longer wise to post and pray for virality, which may never come. When your competitor and you are fighting for the same audience’s attention, paid promotions can make all the difference in you standing out from the crowd.
At Social Friendly, we constantly meet clients who are not at all interested in including paid promotions in their social marketing strategy. But with the decline in organic reach, it has never been more crucial to identify audiences and then allocate a budget to reach that audience. Not even the most famous brands today cannot afford solely on organic distribution.
Originally published at www.socialfriendly.net on January 6, 2018.
