Why Your Organic Facebook Reach is Declining

It’s no secret that Facebook’s organic reach has been declining over the last few years. If you are a marketer and have noticed that fewer and fewer people seem to see your Facebook content unless it is boosted, you aren’t going crazy. That is happening and it’s because of the Facebook algorithm.

But there is a reason it is happening and there are ways to beat the algorithm and get your posts seen by the right people at the right time even with the decline in organic reach. Here is an explanation of what is happening to organic growth and how to beat the algorithm.

There’s too much content

Everyone publishes content on Facebook now and everyone wants their content to be seen. That has created a very crowded Facebook newsfeed. Facebook noticed that people were becoming overloaded with content and that organic reach was declining despite the algorithm.

Getting your content seen on Facebook has become an intense competition. Every company is battling to have their content seen by their people. The problem is, many people are fans of companies that directly compete with each other.

Because of that direct competition, Facebook had to make a choice on which content was seen. That choice was driven by two things: content and relevancy.

Facebook wants to give you the content you want

The extreme influx of new content forced Facebook to make decisions on which content was seen organically and which content wasn’t seen. Facebook has always had the goal of delivering people the content they want to see when they want to see it.

This means that whatever content is the most relevant to the Facebook user, that will be the content they will see. Facebook only wants to show people the content that they believe they want to see. Loading the newsfeed with everything that gets published every day is too much. It would drive people from Facebook.

In a nutshell, the relevancy measure is there to help you and Facebook users. There is no point in someone seeing your content if they won’t take action on it. Of course, that doesn’t make it any less frustrating for digital marketers.

Thankfully, there is a way to surpass the algorithm and get the reach you want.

More Facebook ad spend equals more reach

It’s not the ideal solution, but it’s the only one that seems to work every time. While video content and live video content have still managed to perform well organically despite the algorithm, Facebook is turning it’s platform into a largely pay for play model with companies.

Truth is, if you want your content seen, you have to pay for it. Facebook wants to make sure the users see the content from their friends, family, and pages they regularly visit first. If you want a spot on the newsfeed, you are going to have to pay for it.

As Facebook’s ads manager and ad tools have gotten more sophisticated, digital marketers have long been suspicious of the motives. There were rumblings of Facebook wanting to make advertisers hand over more and more money and unfortunately it seems like those rumblings were true.

While Facebook does still reward great content with good organic reach, if you are a brand, you have to pay to be seen. Facebook knows their worth. They know that their users are valuable and they know that brands have little choice but to pay to reach their followers.

Of course, you can still spend time on video and live video in an effort to cut advertising costs. There are plenty of ways to be creative and engage your Facebook followers. Embrace creativity and you will be able to beat the algorithm.

If you want to learn more about advertising on Facebook, my done-for-you system can help.

The Most Important 2017 Social Media Trends

Marketers have to constantly stay up on social media trends. As cumbersome and time-consuming as it may be sometimes, social media is an aspect of business that has to be paid attention to if a company wants to be successful.

The landscape of social media is constantly changing. New platforms pop up almost every day and the algorithms of existing platforms usually change just as you have gotten the hang of the first platform.

Staying abreast of social media trends can mean that you either have a really successful social media year or a really bad year. Here are the most important trends to look out for in 2017.

Live video content

Last year, Facebook and Twitter launched their live video content services and about half of all marketers indicated that live video would be a major part of their social media plan in 2017.

In order to make live video work for you, consider which social media platform your customers used the most frequently. The platform where you get the most engagement is where you will have the most success with live video.

When you plan a live stream, make sure that you are streaming content that your audience will care about. Some good examples are big company-wide events where you’re releasing new products or announcing new initiatives, question and answer sessions with your customers or with high-level executives, and/or product demonstrations.

It is important to not haphazardly throw together live video content. Your customers expect top-notch content and you have to deliver that with your live streams as well.

Messaging apps are the new customer service tools

If you haven’t noticed already, many of your customers reach out to you on social media before they call or email you. Social media and the messaging services attached to social media platforms have quickly become an invaluable customer service tool.

People prefer when they can chat with a customer service representative one on one and don’t have to wait on hold or be bounced around from representative to representative.

Meet your customers where they are. Start to train your customer service representatives in social media. Consider investing in a social media management tool that makes customer service easy. Once you start making this change, your customers will become happier and more responsive to your customer service efforts.

Mobile advertising will become significantly more competitive

Marketing on mobile devices shot up in the last few years. Once people started browsing the web and social media with their phones instead of their laptops or desktops, mobile ads started to become more and more important.

If you were one of the few brands that were early adopters of mobile advertising, good for you! But sadly, there’s some bad news for you in 2017. Mobile advertising is going to get increasingly more competitive as more and more brands start to move from desktop ads to mobile ads.

The mobile ad marketplace is going to get crowded fast and that is going to make it really competitive. Advertisers should be prepared to up the quality of their content and add more money to their mobile ad budget.

While Facebook and Twitter are still going to command a lot of the mobile ad space, Instagram and Snapchat are going to start to become more and more important. People are responding to ads on Instagram faster and better than was anticipated, so Instagram optimized ads are going to be important.

The bottom line with mobile advertising is, companies need to take a hard look at their mobile ad spend and the mobile optimization of their website if they are going to compete. If you don’t have a mobile-optimized site, get on it ASAP as it could take you down this year.

If you want to learn more about social media trends of 2017, take a look at my done-for-you system today.