Facebook Eliminates Organic Reach

In November 2014, Facebook announced that beginning in January 2015 they would be killing the organic reach for business page posts in user’s newsfeeds, meaning businesses cannot offer promotional deals via a post for their business such as:

“Huge sale on Mother’s Day bouquets! Use the code FacebookMOM for an additional 15% off.”

Posts like this will no longer show up on an individual’s newsfeed. Instead, the business will have to pay to advertise on the site to show up as promotional. While this is good for the every day user who was tired of ads, what does this mean for your small business and your social marketing strategy?

What Does Facebook Eliminating Organic Reach Mean for Your Social Marketing Strategy?

Facebook is unclear about what their algorithm will consider “overly promotional”, so a few months of data will be necessary to completely determine the impact of this change; however, businesses are already reporting a significant decline in their organic reach, some up to as much as 75-90%.

A few ideas to consider to adding to your social marketing strategy in light of this Facebook change:

1. Add social relationships and interactions to your own website. Write blogs that your users are interested and want to share. Encourage a direct relationship with your customer because their organic reach can be far more powerful than businesses ever could.
    
2. Don’t make Facebook the center of your businesses marketing strategy and interaction with your customers. Encourage them to sign up for newsletters to stay in contact with your business. Newsletters delivered by email are served 90% of the time while Facebook posts are served 2% of the time. Fostering a relationship via newsletter is going to be much more effective in the long run than relying on social marketing.  

Facebook killing organic reach is going to be unfortunate and costly for businesses, so reconsider your 2015-2016 social marketing strategy in order to maximize the effectiveness of both your website and your social media for your customers.

Source:

Elliott, Nate. "Facebook Has Finally Killed Organic Reach. What Should Marketers Do Next?" Forrester, 17 Nov. 2014, www.forrester.com/blogs/14-11-17-facebook_has_finally_killed_organic_reach_what_should_marketers_do_next/.