Facebook’s Pathetic Organic Reach: Some Thoughts

Question. I’ve been reading your Facebook Marketing Workbook, and it’s proving to be very useful. I’m learning a lot. The reason I’m interested in Facebook Marketing is because I recently started my own company called “~.” We’re still very much in the beginning phases when it comes to monetizing, having first concentrated on building a following as a thought leader. However, while I’m doing well on Twitter, I’m unable to recreate the same amount of interaction on my Facebook page. 

That said, I have two questions to which I can’t find any answers, so I thought I’d reach out and see if you could give me some advice.

First, I’ve used the audience targeting tool in the settings. Since my audience/market is very broad, I literally have over 100 keywords selected. Is this the best approach, or am I better off selecting between 1 and 20 and keeping it super broad?

Second, I post the exact same things on my personal page as I do on my company page. Since I have a lot of active Facebook friends, there’s a lot of activity on my profile page, but I’m not reaching many people on my company page. Would it be better to ONLY post on my company page, since pretty much all of my friends have liked it and would hopefully see the posts there? Or am I totally missing something here?

Thank you ahead of time for your attention.

Answer.

OK, let’s look at the Big Picture and then some drill downs. First and foremost, the “organic” reach on Facebook of Pages (not Profiles) is PATHETIC.  Facebook has cut back very harshly on how brand Pages can show up in the news feed of potential customers, and the news feed itself is VERY cluttered.  Secondly, advertising on Facebook – while powerful – has to be used judiciously and there’s a see saw in the sense that the more nuanced your targeting the more you pay per click, so you have to find that sweet spot. The way I am thinking about Facebook these days is not ORGANIC vs. PAID but rather ORGANIC – AND – PAID. You have to do both – very systematically. 

So your questions.

1. Advertising. If the product is HIGH VALUE, then I recommend really really focusing it.  You’ll pay more per click, but your conversions will be better. If, as you say, you’re going more on branding, etc., I would “go loose” and try to not overfocus it; so I’d get rid of a lot of keywords. In fact, if at all possible, I go with just demographics. Related to this, experiment with the positions – side, news feed, phone vs. tablet vs. PC, using Instagram or not. Experiment with “boosting” posts vs. running ads directly. Be sure to install the Facebook Pixel and measure any conversions that you can (you might even define a conversion as time on site, or more than 1 page view). So you have to experiment.
   1. Think “out of the box” in terms of Advertising. Meaning, do things like advertise a Facebook contest > reward people for shares (item with the most shares, WINS), basically use advertiser to spur USERS to share your content to THEIR FRIENDS.  So you’re using BOTH advertising AND organic.  That’s the kind of strategy on Facebook that gets the biggest results, if at all possible.
   2. Consider email marketing. In the sense of advertise on Facebook to grow your email list, and then try to post things to your email list that will “go viral” (e.g., contests, freebies, etc.), and re-hook that to Facebook. So you’d be advertising to get email sign ups, and then sending out push emails that require people to post to Facebook and the posts with the most “likes” win the contest. You have to be careful of Facebook TOS (Terms of Service) but you have to really “get some viral” for these to be cost effective (unless the product is high value).
2. Organic Reach. Here’s the dirty little secret of organic on Facebook today. Brand PAGES have basically ZERO organic reach. So you have to advertise to really make a BRAND PAGE work – you can’t rely on organic (unless you’re something crazy funny like BuzzFeed). But for most of us it’s pay to play. HOWEVER, the organic reach of your FANS remains important. So if you can get your FANS to share your content, then their organic reach can indeed be pretty good. That’s why when you’re posting to your PROFILE (you as a person) it’s working vs. posting as a PAGE (you as a business) it’s not. Facebook doesn’t exactly publicize this dirty little secret as they want brands to keep investing in their PAGES as that grows Facebook’s data about what people actually like (which they then sell back as demographic data to advertisers).  At some level, this is all a Ponzi scheme and brands will stop promoting their Facebook pages… realizing that it’s all about the profiles not the pages. (Oh, and the reason that your Twitter is working better is that Twitter doesn’t prioritize brand pages over profiles – we’re all in the same mix on Twitter, and Twitter’s Edgerank is very weak vs. Facebook, which heavily rewards your friends over total strangers).