Since social-media came along, the opportunities for businesses to advertise online blew wide open. Overnight, there was an immediate, free way to get your business’ message to people who were interested in who you were and what you provided. Maybe a link on Facebook is even how you found this article. Well, social-media marketing may start putting some stress on your wallet.
Facebook has been reducing the organic reach of it Pages. An average Facebook user would view around 1500 posts per day from all their friends and Pages they have liked. Facebook reduces that number to 300 posts per day presented in a user’s News Feed. In Facebook’s efforts to focus on “high quality content,” posts from Pages take a big hit.
The last publicly disclosed figures that Facebook released was 16% of posts from Pages reached a user’s News Feed. That was back in 2012. However, recently Ogilvy & Mather did a study and found that posts from Pages have dropped from 12% in October to just 6% in February. Valleywag, a tech blog, reports that Facebook is planning to eventually throttle back Page posts to just 1 – 2%.
If you are using social-media for marketing, hope is not lost! This just means it may be time for some strategy adjustments. If you know that you have large chuck of your target clientele active on Facebook, paid advertising on Facebook may be the way to go. Paid advertising on Facebook allows you to target specific demographics, potentially allowing you to get more bang for your advertising buck.
This may also be a time to diversify your social-media marketing platforms. Twitter is an obvious addition to your social-media reach, and there are many tools that allow you to manage both your Facebook Page and Twitter Account from the same location. But there are many other social-media networks out there that may help you zero in on your target clientele. If you are in the food or fashion industries, perhaps Pinterest could provide your business with the reach it needs. If you are a professional service, don’t discount the connections that LinkedIn could provide.
At the end of the day, the most significant strategy you could implement is to focus on your website. Your website is the one place online that you control. Facebook and many other sites will make adjustments, and we all will just have to go along for the ride. But your website is your own. So, make it the central hub for everything your business does. Making sure that your website has a News or Blog area gives you an easy opportunity to add new content to your site and inform your target clientele of what your business has to offer.
You can learn more about Facebook and the changes it’s making here.
