Facebook Reduced Your Page's Reach and That's Not Necessarily a Bad Thing for Publishers
For those of you who are Facebook page managers and pay attention to the analytics Facebook provides you know the number of people you reach is a fraction of your actual followers (represented by page Likes).
Facebook has long used Edgerank, more recently referred to as "the algorithm," to determine who-sees-what on Facebook however the reach of a page has recently been compacted even further.
- Your Facebook page is about to reach approximately no one. Credit: Social@Ogilvy
According to an analysis of December 2013 posts by Social@Ogilvy the average post reaches just 6% of fans for pages with fewer than 500k followers i.e. local. That means if you have 1000 fans your average post will reach 60... 60!
More than that, reports have just surfaced that Facebook is making more changes to lower the reach to 1-2%. I'll take a moment to explain why this is happening before sharing the broader implications however keep in mind that produce great, share-worthy content will result in far higher reach.
Posting to your website is now even more critical. Web content is easily shareable and it has significant search engine optimization implications which is long-term in nature.
Why Facebook is Changing Your Reach
Most people simply assume they're greedy and evil - well, no but they are a for-profit and they're seeking ways to drive increased revenue per user and per Facebook page.
A clear consequence of reaching fewer people organically is that page owners will pay to promote posts or run ads to reach their fans in other ways.
The truth is that each person, you and me and everyone else on Facebook, "only" can see on average 300 posts each day. That includes friends posts, shares from the internet, Facebook page posts etc while we each have 1500 or so posts pushed our direction.
As a result, Facebook had two options, go the way of Twitter and show everything knowing most people will simply blink and have post flow by like a river or attempt to determine the most appropriate posts and apply a filter.
Facebook chose the latter. As such, 4 out of 5 things shared aren't able to be shown and they're trying to give more room for interesting posts and paid posts.
Ironically, this is the natural consequence of a popular free service - too much noise and not enough signal.
What Limited Facebook Page Post Reach Means to Publishers
The breadth of consequences may not be immediately obvious. Sure, things you post to Facebook won't reach very many people on average but things can still go viral.
The changes that Facebook have taken effect size of the initial "seed", that is people who will see your message just because they liked your page, but not the impact of viral properties. That is to say, if your content is compelling and highly shared and commented on it will spread quickly.
Beyond limiting your organic reach it also means your advertisers Facebook pages are far less valuable and the argument to "just use social" becomes pretty ridiculous - 400 fans * 2% = 8 people! They need you now more than ever.
Limited Facebook Page reach doesn't affect the number of people I reach when I post personally which means you may want to share more personally to your friends - though be thoughtful here about mixing work with personal - and it means posting to your website is now even more critical.
Web content is easily shareable and it has significant search engine optimization implications which is long-term in nature.
Make sure your content strategy reflects the changing landscape to maximize the benefits you receive from your efforts. Moreover, growing a healthy and active email list is critical to engaging your audience consistent.
Social Promotions are still hugely valuable as they have inherent viral properties, your clients can't easily run them on their own (especially now), and they contribute to growing your email list... in addition to revenue.
Sometimes challenges are simply opportunities in disguise. In this case, ongoing changes demonstrate the increasing value of creating a community that is authentically local.
Locable helps address the ongoing local media fragmentation issue for publishers, locals, and businesses alike.
