In the face of many changes in how Facebook serves content to its users over the past year, page managers have often been at a loss to maintain connection with their fans.
Facebook wants to convert many of these pages over to paying customers by making it harder to reach hard won fans by limiting content from pages in users news feeds. If you aren’t putting as much effort into your owned channels you should consider diverting some of your resources, but I digress.
At the same time as Facebook has made it harder to reach the fans whom have liked your page, they have made it easier to promote your posts and use their advertising platform. Truth is, you should consider using it strategically. For the spend, it can be some of the most effective online advertising.
Organic Reach and Likes
Meanwhile, you need to step up your content game and keep on top of changes on Facebook by following All Facebook or Inside Facebook. But the best thing to do is to experiment and see what works for you. Julie Pippert of Artful Media, and one of Zoetica’s best strategists, shared the research and experience she has gathered over the last year as she worked to maintain organic reach and engagement in Facebook at this month’s Social Media Breakfast in Houston, Getting the Most Out of Facebook.
Some of the top tips from the event included:
- Facebook reach is declining for fan pages
- There has been a bug in Insights about the viral reach of pages
- While the average reach of fans is 16%, there is a lot of variation, the key is that it changes often due to Facebook tweaks, so you need to test, test, test.
- A great tool for resizing images for social media is Autre Planete
- Use Insights to determine some of the best times to post, but vary the times to seem less robotic
There is much more, but you will have to watch or listen to the video to hear it all. By the way, the video on these are marginal, but it makes a GREAT posdcast in the background as you work.
Photo Credit: Photo by the amazing Trish Badger
The Facebook Blog hasn’t been updated in 2 years. https://blog.facebook.com/
You make an excellent point. I added Inside Facebook instead as an alternative to AllFacebook, which is the one I tend to follow the most.
Good point. I have changed the links to include AllFacebook, another site that IS definitely up.
So many people have been asking if Facebook is “going out of style.” This is a great example to show people that if you use it in the right way it can still be a great media tool!