Facebook is wonderful, Social media that is free to use, and everybody sees what you post. Or do they?
If you are like most drycleaners, when you or someone else posts content to your timeline, you may believe that everyone and their friends will see what’s posted. Now, this might come as a surprise to you, but much of your Facebook posts may end up not being seen.
Back in 2014, Facebook had a problem, there simply were too many posts being made, and people could not read everything being posted to their timelines. If you were a typical Facebook user, with the usual amount of people and pages you ‘liked’, the content on your timeline was scrolling by way too fast. If you were a heavy user of Facebook with a huge amount of friends and page ‘Likes,’ the content on your timeline seemed to scroll by like the Fruit on a Slot Machine’s wheels. Facebook had to do something, so they began to throttle the flow of content.
At first, Facebook’s engineers created a filter, and set it fifty percent, filtering our half of what was being posted, but there was still ‘too much’ information flowing by. So a few months later, Facebook’s engineers modified the filter again, and reduced organic reach some more, this time down to 20 percent.
Then, back in November of 2014, Facebook made another decision. Facebook had polled their user base, and found that Users complained that many businesses were making too many posts on their fan pages that the Users considered ‘Spammy.’ Many businesses simply did not understand how social media should be used, and were making posts that were offending the very Facebook users they were trying to attract. So, once again Facebook’s engineers modified the platform, this time they dialed back organic reach of posts to six percent.
Six Percent!
That’s right, if you have 1,000 likes on your page, only 60 people will see your posts. That’s a far cry from what it used to be on Facebook. But worse, with reduced organic reach, your post’s visibility may have dropped as well. How can you tell if your business page has been effected, and if your content is being seen?
Well, I wrote a short paper that explains the process you can use to determine if your business page has been hit by reduced reach. This paper explains step by step, with screen shots, how you can use Facebook’s free reporting system called Insights to view your page’s post’s performance. It’s a free download from my web site, all I ask is that you give me your business name and e-mail address. I promise I won’t spam you with buy my stuff, but my stuff (because I do practice what I preach about social selling), and only the owners of Cleaner and Launderer and myself will receive your submitted information.
To download your free copy of my report, point your web browser to:
There is a very short form to fill out, click submit, and then follow the instructions onscreen to download my report.
Now, don’t be alarmed by this reduction in reach. While such reductions CAN severely impact your communications, there ARE other strategies you can use to counter these changes to Facebook.
Facebook has released new (free) tools that are meant to help you counter any reduction in organic reach and may improve your engagement with your prospective customers. Look around your Facebook page, and you are likely to see these new tools being offered. I hope to discuss these changes and new tools in further articles.
One thing for certain, social media is constantly changing. You may have to get used to adapting new strategies and continue altering your current social media practices in response to such changes, but these changes are meant to improve how you communicate within the social media community, and ultimately will improve your social media marketing results.
