How to save your Organic Reach on Facebook

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HOW TO SAVE YOUR ORGANIC REACH ON FACEBOOK Andrew Murray, Social Media Manager

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This is a very bold statement! Let's give it some context before you take a look at our Slideshare. This presentation has been informed by a recent study of Facebook pages under our management. During the month of December 2013, Facebook EMEA updated their algorithm resulting in significant changes to the Organic Reach of brand page posts. Previously, posts would organically reach 16-18% of the total fans of the page, however this has now dropped to between 1-6% (study of 13 brand Facebook pages that Huskies manage ranging from 4,000 fans to over 2 million fans). Cue – panic across all social media teams! Since then, brands everywhere have been wondering what can be done to counteract the drop in reach. Ogilvy Social (nice one guys – really informative) recently released a paper saying that organic reach for brands would eventually reach zero and that paid is an essential part of the mix. We believe that this may be true for many brands, and that a small amount of paid may be required for content to ‘catch fire’. However, we have seen from our own Huskies study that if brands adopt a new editorial approach to content creation - brands will not hit ZERO and may even begin to increase their organic reach.

Transcript of How to save your Organic Reach on Facebook

  • HOW TO SAVE YOUR ORGANIC REACH ON FACEBOOK Andrew Murray, Social Media Manager
  • THE ALGORITHM CHANGE During the month of December 2013, Facebook EMEA updated their algorithm resulting in significant changes to the Organic Reach of brand page posts. Previously, posts would organically reach 16-18% of the total fans of the page, however this has now dropped to between 1-6% (study of 13 brand Facebook pages that Huskies manage ranging from 4,000 fans to over 2 million fans). Cue panic across all social media teams! 16-18% reach 1-6% reach
  • ZERO? Since then, brands everywhere have been wondering what can be done to counteract the drop in reach. Ogilvy Social (nice one guys really informative) recently released a paper saying that organic reach for brands would eventually reach zero and that paid is an essential part of the mix. We believe that this may be true for many brands, and that a small amount of paid may be required for content to catch fire. However, we have seen from our own Huskies study that if brands adopt a new editorial approach to content creation - brands will not hit ZERO and may even begin to increase their organic reach.
  • EDGERANK IS DEAD LONG LIVE ANOTHER ALGORITHM You may have heard social media experts referring to the Edgerank algorithm in recent years (we certainly did)! Edgerank has in fact been dead for over 2 years... however there are currently over 100,000 factors that go into what a user sees on their News Feed when they log into Facebook. Facebook surveyed thousands of users, asking questions to help determine what exactly makes a high-quality Facebook page post. They then used this information to help make their News Feed ranking algorithm better than ever.
  • WHAT DO FACEBOOK WANT? Facebook want brands to invest more budget in paid ads, as well as adapt their News Feed content to be more like Twitter a news channel. AND Facebook are being more blunt about the fact that marketers are going to have to pay for reach... or produce DAMN good content. +
  • WHAT DO FACEBOOK WANT? Facebook has improved on its ability to detect high-quality content. In order to best optimise for Facebooks News Feed algorithm, marketers need to think of social content the same way we think of content meant for Google and other search engines. In other words, if you want your content to be visible to your target audience, it must be timely, relevant, trustworthy and valuable.
  • WHAT DO FACEBOOK WANT? The goal of News Feed is to deliver the right content to the right people at the right time, so they dont miss the stories that are important to them. Ideally, we want News Feed to show all the posts people want to see in the order they want to read them. - Facebook, Dec 2013
  • WHAT FACEBOOK (AND PEOPLE) DONT WANT
  • WHAT TO THINK ABOUT? In our study, we noted that a brand we manage with over 400,000 fans saw a large dip in reach since the algorithm change. Their content consisted solely of image-based content that was rarely topical. This saw their reach fall from 10% in October to 5% at the end of February. Their post reach dropped from 9% to 6% in the same period, with a steady drop of 1% per month since November. In contrast, we manage another Facebook page that has over 40,000 fans. This page posted on average 1.8 posts per day and their content ranged from image-based posts to insight-driven topical content that linked directly to their high-quality site. This brand page saw a 1% INCREASE in their posts organic reach and a 1% increase in their pages organic reach during the November to February period.
  • Make the majority of your content good enough, remarkable enough, to be liquid to be shared outside your brands own circle of influence. WHAT YOU NEED TO DO?
  • But dont forget to keep your content linked to a strong sense of who your brand is, and what you offer. Viral doesnt do you any good if its not linked to underlying strategies and goals. WHAT YOU NEED TO DO?
  • BUT PAID IS STILL IMPORTANT! We know that not every brand post can be topical and highly- shareworthy ALL the time (e.g. product shots, brand messaging, certain social objects, etc.) sometimes these posts just need to be rolled out. They still have their place in a content strategy and they are arguably as important as the timely, relevant, trustworthy and valuable content. Paid is essential in boosting the reach of the above types of posts to both current fans and a highly-targeted group of people (potential new fans) via ads. It is also important to note that through smart use of paid, you can use the granularity of Facebook advertising to serve the right content, to the right people at the right time.
  • WHOS STILL ENJOYING SUCCESS? Brands with content. Red Bull, BMW, Chanel... or even B2B brands. Media companies too. These brands use Facebook as a springboard to their own content, generally hosted on their own websites. Which brands will suffer the most? Brands with no content, mainly CPG brands, which thought for a while that they could spam their users with low-interest content as long as they were fans. For these brands, party is over. Facebook Ads is a very powerful platform perfectly suited for them.
  • TO DO RIGHT NOW Brands need to adapt their content strategy/model to include more quality posts per day, which feature a mix of text, link and photos. Posting once a day without a quality post (link to a relevant article/site, high-quality image that will cause mass engagement, etc.) will not generate significant organic reach. Posts ideally need to be: Topical/Newsworthy Quality content Linked out to a high-quality site ALL posts should focus, focus, FOCUS on generating engagement. OR Posts need to be promoted (brand campaign specific posts). Using paid in an intelligent way will only help bolster a successful Facebook strategy.
  • IN THE LONGER TERM Recently John Battelle put forward an interesting thought in a recent post titled: "To be clear: do not build your brand house on land you don't own." In it, he says, "Spend your money building something worthy, then spend to drive people there. Your agencies have entire creative and media departments that are good at just such practices." We tend to agree. You see we believe in the simple truth that in life, everything changes. The question we ask on a daily basis is: How do we respond? Well, we believe it's important for brands to be agile and adaptive if they are to maintain their relevance and the Facebook debate illustrates this perfectly.
  • By Andrew Murray (Social Media Manager) with special thanks to Brian Moloney (Social Media Analyst), Aleesha Tully (Integrated Search Manager) and David ORorke (Performance Media Manager) www.inthecompanyofhuskies.com