For years now, advertisers have been spoiled by Facebook. Maybe that’s not how we thought of it, but it’s the truth. We used to spend time and money trying to figure out who our audience was and how to reach them, then Facebook came along and our customers kindly gave all of their information and sorted themselves into easily searchable demographics. Of course, the good times can only roll steady for so long. A lot of companies who use Facebook for marketing have been noticing a rapid decline in their reach. This isn’t to say it’s happening to everyone, but it IS happening, and we think we understand why. Facebook is, much like Google, simply moving to the pay to play methodology of business. Consumers don’t really want to be advertised to (well, some do, but not all) so Facebook is delivering less and less business content to their userbase…unless you’re willing to pay. In order to reach more than a quarter of your total audience (and a quarter is being generous) you need to use Facebook’s advertising system to promote posts. This isn’t just a conspiracy theory either. Here is apart of a correspondence sent out by Facebook to their Ad Deck members:
“We expect organic distribution of an individual page’s posts to gradually decline over time as we continually work to make sure people have a meaningful experience on the site.”
Does this mean you should abandon Facebook as an advertising platform? Of course not, it just means you’re going to have to try harder and think faster. For instance, we here at Wikimotive just brought on Erin Ryan, a social media analytics expert, to help keep our company and our clients ahead of the game. If you feel like your Facebook reach is diminishing and you’d like to get back in the game, send her an email at erin.ryan@wikimotive for some free advice on how to improve your social game.