You may have heard about the Facebook news feed change. Here’s the announcement.
The question for those of us who create social media content is: now what?
The full truth is we don’t really know. We’ll watch as Facebook implements their new algorithm to see how it impacts our organic reaches and watch our own Newsfeeds transform.
In the meantime, I believe there are several key items to consider as we create content:
1. The death of organic reach has arrived. Organic reach has been dying for years. This is why I have said for a while now that Facebook marketing plans without a budget is not sufficient/modern. For example, I don’t take social clients without a decent social ads budget. Organic reach has dropped a lot over the last couple of years and this might be the death blow. That doesn’t mean organic reach will go away all together. But I believe it’s safe to say that it will no longer be enough to depend on organic reach to get your content to your customers.
2. Bad content will further restrict your pages reach. The restriction of organic reach will most likely effect pages that produce bad content. I think those who don’t do a good job at social media will be hurt worse than the good players. I explained myself in greater detail in my previous blog regarding this announcement. Facebook’s goal is to keep more people on Facebook and that means providing the best experience possible. So if the Facebook algorithm detects that people don’t like your posts on a regular basis, you will be punished for it. I think this is also a reaction to the polarized political content and *legitimate* fake news. The danger of Facebook is that we are building houses on rented land. I think this will most adversely affect small businesses who do a bad job with social media or do not know how to use social ads effectively.
3. Ad costs will continue to increase. Facebook’s ad inventory on its newsfeed filled up last summer and they were looking for new ad revenue. Facebook will continue to place ads because it’s their revenue stream. The cost may go up to weed out some ads but overall I don’t see a change in this coming quickly. Over time expect ad costs to continue to rise. Remember above all else, create quality content so that your customers are excited about the value your posts give them.