Last month, Facebook announced that in January 2015 they would be making another adjustment to their “Edge Rank” algorithm that will further cut the organic reach of posts the platform considers “overly promotional.” What does that mean? Facebook says:
According to people we surveyed, there are some consistent traits that make organic posts feel too promotional:
- Posts that solely push people to buy a product or install an app
- Posts that push people to enter promotions and sweepstakes with no real context
- Posts that reuse the exact same content from ads
So what will Facebook do with these posts? They will make it harder for such posts to naturally show up in your fans’ News Feeds. This is not the first time Facebook has made such a change. In case you haven’t noticed, the organic reach of Facebook pages has been dropping steadily for more than a year due to Facebook’s continual effort to either “improve the user experience” or to “extort brands into buying advertising” depending on who you talk to. The average organic page reach has declined over the past year to 6% (though well managed pages like ours average much higher, typically 20-30%).
The good news about this particular change is that it won’t effect you IF you have already been doing things right. Overly promotional posts have always been spammy enough that they never really worked to begin with, and if you’re doing a good job on Facebook, they’re not part of your content strategy anyway. The bad news is, if you haven’t been doing things right, or really have no idea how to do Facebook effectively, starting in January it’s going to get even harder for you.
Now more than ever it’s crucial for you to know what you’re doing in order to be able to leverage your Facebook presence effectively. Time to call in a professional? Get a quote from us. But even if you don’t get help from us. Get help somewhere.