Is Facebooks organic reach dead?
A few of our digital marketing team recently noticed how drastically Facebook organic reach has dropped in the recent months/years. Things that worked, do not work anymore and Facebook forces us to change our whole marketing strategy. It has the most impact on people who thought it is enough to have a lot of likes and then just post something every now and then. Anyone can do it, right? But what if you are posting and no one sees it? 2000 likes on page and 20 people reach? How is that possible? This article will talk about how Facebook algorithm works now in 2019 and what everyone needs to know. You are going to find out why you do not get any likes and why you might need some help.
What is Facebook organic reach?
Organic reach refers to how many people you can reach for free on Facebook by posting to your Page. (business.facebook.com) Few years ago, it was so easy to post something, and everyone could see that. You got a lot of likes and a lot of comments. Post something today and you will notice the change.
So, what is up with Facebook organic reach?
Nowadays, more and more content is on social media. More photos, videos and more people who want to share their experiences. Therefore, Facebook had to come up with the strategy of filtering those posts from the most relevant. So, they started to make changes in the algorithm that impacted Facebook pages and their reach. It is harder to get engagement and harder to get more likes. The graph below shows how the organic reach has dropped up until 2018. Imagine what it is now in 2019. Therefore, it is very important to understand what to do on Facebook in order to maximise the organic reach. I also have to mention one thing. The amount of posts and the whole change in algorithm is not the only reason why the reach has dropped. Think about it this way. Less reach forces people to pay more for advertising to reach more people which means more money for Facebook?
What do you need to do then?
Well, there are so many things you can do in order to maximise your organic reach. However, nowadays it requires patience, creativity and your time. As it was mentioned earlier, Facebook’s organic reach depends on Facebook’s algorithm, so in order to better understand what to do, we need to be up to date all the time with all the Facebook’s algorithm changes.
What is Facebook algorithm?
The new Facebook algorithm is a process that ranks all available posts that can display on a user’s News Feed based on how likely that user will have a positive reaction.
In other words, it is a system where Facebook ranks your posts and then is displayed to your friends/ fans. Now the question is: How Facebook ranks these posts?
According to Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg: Facebook’s algorithm now prioritizes content posted from friends over publishers, with a focus on “meaningful interactions.”
This means there is a need to make posts that will start a conversation between your followers. Before, it was all about engagement. 1000 likes and plenty of comments? OK, your post will be seen by everybody. That is why social media competitions worked very well. People have been commenting one word in the comment section, which helped to bump up the post in news feeds and raise awareness of the brand. However, with this new update, it is not going to work as good as before. Now we need a lot of likes and comments too, but there should be a discussion in between members. And that is a priority number 1 for Facebook.
What works with Facebook algorithm and why?
Groups – Facebook wants to keep everything on Facebook, therefore community groups are a good place for you to get visible. Recently Facebook has been subconsciously pushing you to join the groups and be active (badges for newbies and some little adverts for groups as well). Even in news feed you can notice posts from groups.
Video – Video is definitely the best organic reach tool. Over 8 billion videos or 100 million hours of videos are watched on Facebook every day and more than a half is watched without a sound! This is the most effective tool but the most difficult to make.
Live videos – As soon as you start Live video, everyone gets a notification and suddenly you can get bigger reach. How long should it be and how often? That is going to be a topic of our next post.
Question post – Simply write a post about a topic and ask a question. Why? When people see a question there is a psychological need to answer it. This creates more engagement, more comments and a discussion. Go back to algorithm and you’ll see why that works.
Events – Facebook is the best platform for creating your events. People like to engage with it and get all important information about your festival, birthday etc. It also makes posts about your friend taking part in an event: “Do you want to join him?” It is very good for organic growth.
There are more things that we can talk about, frequency, type of content etc. But we will discuss it in the next post as well. Just remember to make a post that will create a discussion and give value to people. Do not try to sell with every post. Facebook is great for entertainment, so entertain people as well.
What does not work on Facebook anymore?
Many popular digital marketers on platform like socialmediaexaminer.com or buffer, etc. said that for example you should not even bother to share a YouTube link video. It just does not work. Instead, upload your video on Facebook, or at least a little trailer and then put the link into the comments or description of the video. If the video belongs to someone else, look for it on Facebook and share it from the original owner’s upload. YouTube is Facebook’s main competitor, so it will automatically give that content less reach.
Another big platform Buzz sumo has analysed over 700 million posts and found that link posts for any article or blog post that is outside of the Facebook’s ecosystem, get the lowest reach and engagement. And that is the fact that average organic reach is 1% to 6%. Buzzsumo next argues that memes do not really work either, and video is outperforming images by 76%!
The verdict
Facebook’s algorithm will always change, and we need to adapt to those changes. More and more posts will be shared on social media and the harder it will get for everybody to grow organically. But there is always a chance to get the most out of the social media. It requires time and creativity and the want to entertain your fans, engage with them closer. Not many people have time for this nowadays, but everyone understands the need of doing social media. That is why every business is hiring a person or an agency who take care of social media. It is a lot of work that will pay off in a long run.
What is Facebook pixel and why you should be using it?
Facebook pixel is well-known in this data collection marketing world. But if you are a small business owner or new to social media marketing you might be wondering what is it and why you should use it.
What is Facebook pixel?
Firstly, let’s have a look on what Facebook says about their Pixel:
The Facebook pixel is an analytics tool that allows you to measure the effectiveness of your advertising by understanding the actions that people take on your website.
In other words, Facebook pixel is something like a black box in your car or airplane. It gathers all data about your car: the fuel, the miles per hour, speed etc. It gathers data from every single page of your website like how many people have visited the site, how long they have spent time on the website and all other interesting measures. You can analyse all of this through your Facebook business account. You do not have to necessary run the ads in order to get those measures. BUT it is nothing like Google analytics. Yes, you can get similar data, but Facebook can actually take that data and connect them with Facebook users. That is why you always click on the websites I agree with using cookies. Once you go on the website, you will leave a ‘footprint’ which is then connected with your social media account. That is also why you sometimes get adverts on Facebook showing the website that you recently visited.
What can be Facebook Pixel used for?
There are many things you can do with Facebook Pixel, I will go through a few of them.
Maybe you have noticed that so many people have left something in the cart and have not finished the order. Did you know how much money you actually lose? Using Facebook pixel, you will find out the total cost of your cart. This data will help you to think about the strategy on how to convert or retarget those customers and try to lower that number next month. You can make some adverts targeting those people and remind them leaving their cart abandoned or you can give them discount or send an email.
As it was mentioned earlier, the data from Pixel can be easily used for your Facebook advert campaigns. You can for example target people who have visited your website, or people who did take a certain action on your website (e.g. downloading e-book), or people who have purchased your product or service. The options are unlimited. The advantage is that those people will get more related content which means higher chance to succeed.
Facebook can use its targeting data to help you build a lookalike audience of people who have similar likes, interests, and demographics to people who are already interacting with your website. This can help expand your potential customer base. This means that Facebook will take all of the data about your website visitors (really everything) and will find similar people on Facebook (similar interests, purchasing history, demographic, etc). These similar people are your new visitors, new people who have not seen your website, but they are most likely to be your new customers out of everyone.
Facebook catalogue is another useful thing. You can make your Facebook shoppable which usually requires to have a Facebook pixel. When having a shop on Facebook, you can tag your products in the posts, or even you can make a shoppable Instagram!
The Facebook pixel is a really powerful tool and will definitely help you reach your goals. There is much more use of the Facebook pixel but that would make this article even longer. I want to keep it simple for everyone. Even though, you do not run Facebook ads yet, you should install a Facebook pixel straight away. It will gather the data and when you decide to make some ads, you will already have a good foundation of the metrics and data to make your ad shine.
How do I get Facebook pixel on my website?
This process might be a slightly complicated for a first-time user. However, Facebook is trying to make it more and more simple. There is a number of ways you can install your Facebook pixel. Simply head over your business account on Facebook, click Facebook pixel and follow the instructions. You will need a full access into your website. After installing it, it might take time to get sufficient data but the more data, the more accurate targeting.
Every business should use Facebook pixel and learn more about customers. Google Analytics is a great tool too, but it does not connect the data with the Facebook users. This is the magic behind you getting the ads on Facebook based on what you have done on a certain website. If they are using it, why not you?
