Hi, Lauren Kaye here with this week’s Content & Coffee with Brafton. We always talk about how good social media is for SEO and content marketing. It’s a great organic way to get more reach, it’s how you can attract new readers, and it builds your web presence. Click play to watch the full video, or read the transcript below.
But what happens when social media bites back? There’s a lot of buzz surrounding Facebook’s treatment of brands recently. Whereas the site used to give businesses relatively unbridled jurisdiction, it has been turning down the faucet for a while. And now, brand posts are reaching a fraction of their follower bases. If a company’s business Page has around 10,000 fans, Facebook’s News Feed algorithm might only show it to 10 to 20 percent of those people.
Brafton recently covered a study by Ogilvy & Mather, which sought to determine how far social posts reach on Facebook. It found that only about 12 percent of followers were exposed to posts.
The situation’s gotten even worse. There are rumors that brands’ posts will continue to lose ground and they might eventually only reach 1 to 2 percent of a company’s follower base. Unfortunately, this could mean that your most engaging posts, your funniest updates, your most interactive questions never reach the intended audience.
So what’s a marketer to do? On one hand, it could be the catalyst for an ad campaign. If you can’t reach people organically, you could buy your way into their line of sight. Or, it could be a signal that it’s time change up your social strategy. If Facebook doesn’t want to give you facetime, maybe use the network as an internal tool and focus your outreach efforts on networks that give equal visibility to businesses and consumers.
At the same time, this shouldn’t be misinterpreted as a reason to ditch Facebook completely. The network still has the widest reach and puts businesses in contact with billions of people worldwide. It means you should consider what’s working for your brand and stop doing what isn’t.
Got content marketing questions? Leave them in the comments section below or Tweet them @brafton.
