What should marketers do about the Facebook reach changes for Pages? Is organic Reach going away completely for Pages??
Organic reach continues to decline and Facebook just announced that it’s going to go down even further. But there are strategies that businesses can use on Facebook to reach their customers.
Facebook Reach Changes
First of all, what has happened – hasn’t Facebook Reach already declined? Yes it has and I actually just recommended on my 2018 Predictions on Social Media Examiner that people should post less on Facebook because of these changes (prediction #24 if you want to scroll right to it).
But Mark Zuckerberg announced that he wants to focus on connecting people more (and Pages less). Here’s a quote from his update:
But recently we’ve gotten feedback from our community that public content — posts from businesses, brands and media — is crowding out the personal moments that lead us to connect more with each other. – Mark Zuckerberg
And here is the quote from the Facebook Newsroom article about how they are responding:
As we make these updates, Pages may see their reach, video watch time and referral traffic decrease. The impact will vary from Page to Page, driven by factors including the type of content they produce and how people interact with it. Pages making posts that people generally don’t react to or comment on could see the biggest decreases in distribution. Pages whose posts prompt conversations between friends will see less of an effect.
They go on to say that reach won’t disappear completely and people can still use the “See First” feature for Pages that are important to them.
To use this feature, you go to the Page, click Following and then select See First. You can let your following know about this and you may get some people who use this feature but more than likely the majority of your Fans won’t.
So what should marketers do? Abandon their Pages completely? Not completely but I am recommending not worrying as much about content on your Page.
What marketers should do about the decreased Facebook reach
I think we are seeing the beginning of the end for Facebook Pages being a vehicle for businesses to reach their customers organically. In the future Facebook is going to be only an ads platform.
1. Continue to count on Facebook Live video and focus more energy on video for organic reach
2. Facebook Ads are still critical and still effective for reaching your targeted audience
3. Think about using a Facebook Group for your business
Facebook Groups aren’t necessarily a good fit for every business because they take more time and more moderation. Here are 5 questions to ask yourself before starting a Facebook Group
Make sure you are using strategies and tactics to grow your email list from Facebook so if this platform doesn’t work for you anymore, you have ways to connect with your community.
I’m still seeing good results from Facebook ads and my Facebook Live videos. My traffic to my site from Facebook went up last year. But I’m going to continue to monitor closely as these changes roll out!
How about you? Let me know your thoughts about the changes and how you are going to respond in the comments below.
I think it is really going to be interesting to see what happens. Are people going to start posting more using personal profiles? If they do that may work for a short time but It will also make Facebook a noisier platform than it already is. This approach also will not work for every business anyways. I think there will also start to be some backlash from people not as much in the know about all these changes. Similarly, people may abandon the platform altogether – and that can have an impact on the Facebooks Ads platform down the road. What also will be interesting is seeing what companies start to do with other platforms. If Facebook is no longer a place to focus as much attention will that mean the focus turns to more activity on platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram & Snapchat?
What I think is most important for businesses is to look back at the fundamentals of Social Media Marketing again; that being on Connections and Conversations. I have seen many businesses who regularly use social media to broadcast anything and everything in hopes of gaining traffic, sales leads and more.
If we focus on how we can build connections, foster those connections and regularly engage with leads and current customers – that’s how business will grow and that’s how companies should alter their use of social media – on almost every platform
I know – it’s going to be SUPER interesting! I think this will really shut out smaller businesses who don’t have an ads budget. BUT they may want to re-think where they are spending their marketing dollars. Facebook is STILL the best place to reach targeted traffic at the cheapest cost in my opinion. I think more Groups are going to come out of this but then that will change too. And Groups really aren’t right for every business. Thanks for your thoughts on this Lowell!!
Hi, I don’t think everyone teaching SM agrees with abandoning our posting and doing less. I was trained to build around my brand, be personal and try to post things that are engaging. If we continue to do that and live – video-( which I need to do more of) won’t that be more personal to help keep your page noticed. Then if your adding ads(which I have been slow with) it should even be better. I guess I am hearing mix messages out there. Don’t you still want an interesting page to have people interact with?
Sorry for the late reply on this! So what I mean by doing less is not investing as much to organic posts UNLESS they are working for you. And only posting the types of things that get the most engagement (but related to your brand) So yes, you definitely want an engaging Page and some people are still getting good engagement organically so in those cases, don’t adjust things and abandon your page but keep a good eye on your stats.