Jack Tang — Singapore Digital Marketer

I used to market phones, now I market video games.

I used to market phones, now I market video games. Views my own.

Organic Reach is Finally Dead

It was a matter of time. They did pre-empt this towards the end of last year, and what a bombshell it was for brands by Mark on his first weeks back at work at Facebook.

Facebook (essentially Mark) announced that they were going to improve the quality of experience in using Facebook. Mark posted about it.

Newsroom also published:

“Because space in News Feed is limited, showing more posts from friends and family and updates that spark conversation means we’ll show less public content, including videos and other posts from publishers or businesses.

As we make these updates, Pages may see their reach, video watch time and referral traffic decrease. The impact will vary from Page to Page, driven by factors including the type of content they produce and how people interact with it. Pages making posts that people generally don’t react to or comment on could see the biggest decreases in distribution. Pages whose posts prompt conversations between friends will see less of an effect.”

What does this mean for brands and publishers?
Long story short:  Ads are going to cost more because organic reach for brand pages will be dropping.
Previously, the order for formats for higher Newsfeed rankings would be:
  • Live videos
  • Videos
  • Links (if you were a publisher)
  • Photos
  • Photos with link in copy / notes etc.

This meant that there were people trying to game Needsfeed rankings all the time with silly live streams and videos ripped from everywhere on the Internet.

As confirmed in this video:

“Now, we’ll also consider whether a potential interaction is between two people, or between a person and a Page. Person-to-person will be more valuable than person-to-Page. Connections with people in your network will get the biggest boost because interacting with people you’re close to is more meaningful”

Also mentioned in the video is that they will give high scores to “thoughtful long replies”, which means getting the audience to comment on your posts might be more important than before.
Facebook Reach will go down.
 
What should brands do?

“Page posts that generate conversation between people will show higher in News Feed. For example, live videos often lead to discussion among viewers on Facebook – in fact, live videos on average get six times as many interactions as regular videos. Many creators who post videos on Facebook prompt discussion among their followers, as do posts from celebrities. In Groups, people often interact around public content. Local businesses connect with their communities by posting relevant updates and creating events. And news can help start conversations on important issues.”

This means a couple of things for brands:
  1. “Increasing the audience base” and subsequently increasing your organic reach, is no longer valid.
  2. Budget will have to be set aside to make sure good content gets visibility through promoted page posts.
  3. Ads will get more expensive. (CPM should increase in 2018)
  4. Live videos should still get a decent amount of reach.
  5. Among brands, without creating content that “hacks” engagement, videos still play a significant portion for the reach IF it gets more comment velocity (more and lengthier comments in a shorter period of time).
  6. Facebook Verified Profiles should also still have a larger advantage compared to Facebook Business Pages
  7. Verified pages should also rank higher than non-verified pages.
  8. Facebook groups are getting more important as by default after joining groups, users are still notifications about posts in groups. Brands should seek alternative ways to grow Facebook Groups instead by targeting interest.