Help! I can’t reach my Facebook fans…
Facebook only businesses are in trouble
One of the precepts that we hold dearest is controlling your content. We believe that it is very important that you produce content regularly and publish it in places where you are able to control the layout comments and messaging.
Once you publish the content then you can disseminate it through the various chosen mechanisms that best fit your audiences. Whether that be Facebook, Pinterest, email marketing, LinkedIn, twitter or one of the other thousands of social networks.
The underlying concept is control. If you published to your website and make it the source of all of your information, then you are free to repurpose it and use it again in the future without having to do as much work.
If you use someone else’s social media platform, often times you are submitting content that is subject to their terms of service. And how many terms of service have you actually read? I know I haven’t read many! And even if I have read some, they are probably changed since then.
Additionally, a minor mistake can cause your page or account to be banned! Then you have to appeal to a huge company to bring back your page, meanwhile, your business is hanging by a thread.
Organic Facebook posts now reach less than 2% of audience
Facebook has now become a prime example that supports this theory. It doesn’t really matter how many fans you have. You can no longer reach even half of them regularly through posting consistent content. The only guaranteed way to reach them now is with paid advertising. In simple terms your organic reach from just posting is now limited to 1 to 2%.
It is understandable that you don’t see all of your friends posts and all of the businesses posts who you follow or are friends with. Facebook, like Google, want to give users the best experience possible. Facebook has an algorithm (formerly known as Edgerank) that works to feed you the most relevant and pertinent posts from your friends, acquaintances, organizations and businesses.
The Facebook algorithm does two key things:
- It works to remove spam and show high quality content.
- It filters the average of 1500-15,000 relevant stories down to 300 posts relevant to each user at any given time. The more friends you have the harder the filter has to work, and thus choices are made programmatically that try and decipher your preferences.
How to reach your audience now
So what is a Business owner (advertiser) to do? Facebook is increasingly becoming more and more diluted.
- Make your website or app or online real estate that you own the source of information.
- Take the link to that source and publish it instead of publishing that content in someone else’s domain.
- Start running small paid advertising campaigns in the places that you know convert. Facebook is still great for reaching your target audience and advertising to a very specific demographic and geographic group. Spread out your budget and use a lower dollar amount than is suggested.The cost of reaching your audience is still lower on Facebook that it is with LinkedIn or Google Adwords.
- Implement listening mechanisms like Google alerts to help you tap into your audience and the way they think, where they are online, and what your potential pre-customers thought process is.
- Begin publishing to other vertical “top of the funnel” marketing mechanisms like email (diversification).
Travis Finseth is the owner of Nuzu Net Media, a full service digital marketing agency in Jackson, MS. He can be found on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and Linkedin, but more typically at home with the beautiful wife and three kids... or on the basketball or volleyball court. More about Travis...
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