Dip in followers? It’s normal. Facebook is cleaning out inactive accounts. Which means if you have ever bought followers in any way you are going to see a drop in your follower count.
We saw this exact same thing on Instagram and when it happened all hell broke loose on the Internet. Justin Bieber and Kim Kardashian lost a combined total of close to 5 million followers.
This Facebook cleanse has been a bit more calm and quiet. So before you get nervous about the followers you no longer have, let me tell you why it can be a good thing for your overall reach.
Targeted Niche Followers vs Uninterested Mass Followers
You’ve probably heard this from me by now and it’s a belief I don’t see changing. It’s better to have a smaller super targeted niche following of people who love you, listen to you, and engage with you, than a ton of followers who don’t care what you have to say.
Yes, there are times when you go to a social page and you see a lot of followers and you may think that it means they are a good company or that people like them. In a way it’s social proofing. The more followers you have, the more liked you are, right? Wrong. If you look closely, a lot of these accounts with a lot of followers have no interaction. No retweets. No mentions. No likes or comments. Literally no engagement whatsoever. Consumers will begin to get savvier to this and know it is an unengaged following. Or worse, a fake following of bots. Which more times than not, it is.
It’s hard to build a community. It takes time and effort. You can’t buy likes. You can buy love. And you surely can’t buy engagement. So, many times your business can be better off with less followers and fans who are actively listening, clicking and engaging than one filled with shadows of people who really aren’t there.
With that said, let’s talk about Facebook’s new cleanse and why this can help you increase your organic Facebook reach.
Facebook Reach Is Down
There’s no denying it. Facebook’s organic reach is down on fan pages. Advertising reach on the other hand is up.
Note, I said fan page or business pages, not all of Facebook. In fact, Facebook usage is still strong. People are still sharing. People are still commenting and liking. But business page reach is harder to achieve without advertising. That’s a whole other situation and I’ll get into it later.
So why aren’t your fans and followers seeing your posts? There are a lot of factors that go into the algorithm and Facebook claims it all comes down to content. Good content will be seen if your followers like the content you are posting.
What it really comes down to is this.
Good content will be seen by targeted followers. That means followers who are actually interested in the type of content that you post on your page.
Why A Follower Cleanse Can Be Good To Increase Facebook Reach
Since you want to focus on good followers. Since good followers are those who like your content, any spammy, inactive followers are doing more harm to your overall reach than anything.
1. Less inactive accounts = more real eyeballs
Because people who don’t look or engage with any of your content will eventually ruin it for others, the less inactive people you have as fans, the more likely your real fans will see your content. The way Facebook Algorithm works is, your content is shown to people who look at your stuff. If they engage with it, they’ll see more of it. If they don’t they’ll see less and less of it, until they never see it at all. Once many people don’t see your content, Facebook views this as bad content and starts showing it to even less people.
2. More targeted following = more eyeballs
When you connect with your audience right between the eyeballs, more of your content will get seen. Why? Because people will engage with it, click it, like it, or comment on it. This is a good sign to Facebook and it will be shown to more people. So, if your following is targeted, they are more likely to see your content.
3. More active followers = better data & insights
You know how people are always saying post when your fans are online. I’m guilty of saying it too. But what about those fake accounts? Do you really want to post when they are online? No. So with a cleanse of your Facebook followers, you may actually get access to real data of your real followers. That can be powerful for you.
4. More realistic fans = better CTR
Once your real fans emerge you’ll get a better click through rate. With more targeted followers that like your content and the type of content you provide, your click-through rate should increase because you don’t have to count those people who just don’t care about you. 5 clicks out of 100 fans is much better than 5 clicks out of 1,000.
What To Do Next
Continue to create great content and connect with those who are interested in what you sell. If you are going to advertise, advertise to your list of customers through custom audiences. Don’t rely on buying fans and just be real.
And if you are really interested in increasing your Facebook reach, you can read these articles here for more ideas.
How To Increase Facebook Reach Without Paying For Advertising
