It’s been widely reported that organic Facebook reach for brand pages has been greatly reduced in the past couple of months, with articles rolling out by the day about minimized organic impact. Even if you’re posting on your Facebook page regularly, only 1-3% of your total fans might see your post.
Yes, Facebook is making these changes to brand pages to encourage brands to advertise with Facebook. Why now?
1) Facebook’s a business, unfortunately for us.
This one isn’t ideal, but it is the truth. Remember their IPO two years ago? They’re a business and need to grow, so minimizing free visibility for brand content is inevitable for a public company looking to increase advertising revenue — its main source of funding at this point. Facebook needs to grow its business the same way that you do, as much as it may affect your digital media strategies.
2) Paid amplification remains crucial to any content strategy.
After getting reach on Facebook for free all these years, you might automatically dismiss the idea of promoting your content, thinking a large investment is needed. Really, you need very little investment to create an impact on Facebook. This Moz blog provides that perspective in terms of a CPM comparison with other channels, and Facebook remains extremely affordable.
3) We adapt to maximize value for our brand pages and validate our spending.
When Google makes an algorithm update or privacy laws are passed that affect targeting in one form or another, marketers adapt to make the best of it to maximize the potential of their efforts. It’s the same situation with recent Facebook changes and future modficiations that are bound to happen on other “free” networks. But before we dismiss the changes as impossible for our marketing budgets, we should consider why we want to be on Facebook and the value it provides. Think about the potential reach Facebook and other networks give to your content. Because certainly, once Zuck & Co. set this “pay to play” precedent, other social networks will follow suit.
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