What’s the Point in Posting on Facebook?

Have you noticed a difference in the reach your Facebook posts are getting? What about fewer likes or less comments on your Page’s posts? The reason for that is Facebook’s recent update to their algorithm.

Back in November, Facebook warned social media marketers that changes were coming to its News Feed in 2015, but I don’t think any marketer anticipated how much those changes were going to affect their marketing reach. Facebook’s intention with the change is to prevent Pages from posting overly promotional content. The criteria for “promotional posts” include:

  • Posts that solely push people to buy a product or install an app
  • Posts that push people to enter promotions and sweepstakes with no real context
  • Posts that reuse the exact same content from ads

Here are the examples Facebook shared of what not to do when they released their new guidelines.

Facebook Post

While Facebook providing us with guidelines is extremely nice of them, it doesn’t mean that the algorithm changes aren’t hurting Pages drastically. According to a recent study, a Page’s organic reach is approximately 2% to 6% of the site’s fans. This percentage is about half of what it was five months ago. Facebook has been cutting back on Page’s organic reach for some time now, but this algorithm update has been the biggest hit. With the change, companies have a few choices for moving forward with Facebook.

Pay Up

Due to social media’s ever growing popularity, many companies have created or expanded their social media budgets over the year. This will allow companies to start using promoted posts or use them more frequently. The upside to promoted posts is that you will likely increase the number of Page likes, which could potentially help with your organic reach, at least that is something I have noticed with a few of our social media clients.

Get the Creative Juices Flowing

The new algorithm is really forcing companies to come with their A game when it comes to creativity. With the change, companies now are having to rely heavily on word of mouth — likes, comments, and shares in the Facebook world — to get their posts seen and original posts are what get interaction.

Like I said earlier, the algorithm changes were implemented earlier this year, so there is still a lot that companies haven’t tried yet as far as increasing their organic reach. It will be interesting to see how things continue to change for Pages and what Pages are willing to do to get their organic numbers back to what they used to be.

Lexie Kimball

Lexie is an Account Manager at Netvantage Marketing, an online marketing company that specializes in SEO, PPC and social media. At Netvantage, Lexie assists with online marketing campaigns and social media outreach.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *