Facebook’s Declining Reach & Facebook Advertising

This is a hot topic in the social media world. And rightfully so, this topic is extremely important. In case you haven’t heard, Facebook’s organic reach is declining at a rapid rate. If you have a Fan page, you have probably already seen this take hold. Your posts used to reach 100 or 200 people, now your posts are reaching a mere 50. It’s frustrating, I feel ya! I manage a ton of our clients’ pages and I don’t like what I am seeing either.

But the truth of the matter is that Facebook is a business and as a business they need money to survive. And even more money to acquire startups for 2 billion a pop. Chump change, right 🙂 So while we can bitch and complain all day long, that’s not going to help you reach more people on Facebook.

But hey, it’s annoying. So, I’ll give you a few minutes to get it all out. Vent to me. I’m listening. 🙂 Feel better? Alright, now let’s talk about the opportunities opened to you.

You aren’t alone in this. This decline is happening across the board, even to large businesses with vast followings on Facebook. Eat24 just jumped ship with an epic “peace-out” letter that took some serious balls. They had tens of thousands of fans. Eat24 is experiencing decline, Coca Cola is experiencing decline, and your competitors are also experiencing the same thing. Many of them might decide to leave. You may even decide to leave. But before you do here’s what you need to know.

Facebook Advertising Options

Facebook is turning into a pay-to-pay network. If you are going reach the people you want to reach, you are going to have to pay for it. Luckily, Facebook has pretty solid advertising campaigns to choose from and they can get very, very targeted. In fact, targeted is really an understatement. I just saw an ad on my feed that was only for Cleggs (my last name). Of course I “liked” it. It spoke right to me and the other Cleggs on Facebook. Talk about community building.

If you are willing to pay, you have options. You can do a “Like”, Post Engagement, or Website Click campaign. I’d skip the “Like” campaign and focus not on paying to build your followings, but rather paying to actually get your messaging in front of the right people through a boosted post or “Post Engagement” campaign.

I break down the economics of my decision here. If you don’t feel like reading, the bottom line is that you will reach more people for less money boosting a post than garnering more likes.

If you have a landing page set up where you can capture leads, then I’d say go ahead and test the website click campaign as well. The cost per clicks are more expensive, but if you can get those people from Facebook to join your list (that you own) and market to them separately it might be worth the investment.

Employee Advocacy

Now we know that Facebook fan page reach is on the decline.But, there have yet to be reports about personal page reach declining. Which brings me to my next point, employee advocacy. This strategy entails you to encourage your employees to share your company posts and information about your business. Of course you want it to be authentic so you’ll have to develop the right tone and have your employees put their own flair into the posts.

Content Creation

Social media works when you have something to share and when others have something to share. Your best bet is to have amazing content that is so totally awesome that all your friends, fans, and customers want to show it to their friends and share it with their social networks. Remember what I said about personal pages and reach. It still works. 🙂 To create amazing shareable content, you should start with your blog. Your blog allows you showcase your infographics, images, and drool worthy content that is going to get people sharing. And when they share, their friends are aware of who you are, and they are directed back to your site. Invest some money into great content that people want to share and you’ll be in good hands.

What is your take on Facebook’s new outlook?  What will you and your business do?