With the declining reach of Facebook Page posts, Facebook are urging businesses to buy Facebook Ads to ensure their Page Fans see the posts they make.
Previously, it’s been said that on average, your posts from your Facebook page are seen by around 16% of your fans. As of December this year, this could reduce to 2.5%
Digital Magazine AdAge recently obtained a sales deck sent out to partners which stated:
“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.”
Facebook has also stated that marketers should consider paid distribution to “Maximise delivery of your message in Newsfeed”
Boost Your Posts
You may have noticed Facebook offering a “Boost Post” option on your page posts (and in your insights area). Well, in future you’re going to have to hit that button to increase the number of people that see your posts:
On hitting the Boost button you can then select how much you want to spend on boosting your post and get an expectation of how many people your post could reach. You can also use various targeting options such as age, sex and location of users that are eligible to see your boosted post.
My Thoughts…
The world of digital marketing is fast evolving: Just like in the offline world simply using one marketing medium is not going to help your business reach as far as it could. Whether you are paying for SEO, PPC, Twitter Advertising or Facebook Advertising you should consider the other mediums available.
I’m not really surprised by this. Facebook has been heading in this direction for some time and really why shouldn’t they?
It’s free to have a Facebook Page, if you share and engage you can still organically reach users but if you want more, you’ll have to pay for the privilege. I actually think it’s pretty fair considering the reach Facebook can provide.
Online Marketing (done well) can provide better returns than most other mediums, it’s more accountable than any other medium and for many, it’s largely responsible for the growth of their business. Online Marketing should cost, in whatever form it comes in, especially if it’s giving you value.
Try find marketing that can give you all of the above in the offline world for free. You won’t.
