Facebook encourages you to “pay to play”

The organic (free) reach of Facebook decreases again

Will the relentless push to monetise ultimately lead to the downfall of Facebook? Probably not, but more recent changes have once again diminished the marketing potential for small businesses. Over the last couple of years, Facebook has quietly decreased its organic reach – i.e. the potential for your post to reach your fans’ news feeds, without publicly announcing too much about it. However, earlier this month Facebook addressed users growing concerns directly by stating the following:

“… Competition for each News Feed story is increasing. Because the content in News Feed is always changing, and we’re seeing more people sharing more content, Pages will likely see changes in distribution. For many Pages, this includes a decline in organic reach. We expect this trend to continue as the competition for each story remains strong and we focus on quality.“

A further official comment then went on to say that the best way for a business to get their content seen is to pay for it.

So no real ambiguity here – even where you’ve built up a sizeable community, don’t expect your content to reach them all. In fact, the data suggests that you might well be reaching less than 10% of them unless you pay.

This is a bitter pill to swallow for businesses, including dentists, who have put a great deal of time into developing their Facebook presence and building a loyal fan base – only to find that their content is simply not reaching them. Of course every business, Facebook included, needs to generate profit and no doubt we should all have seen this coming; however the speed and scale of it has taken many by surprise.

What can you do about it?

Sadly there doesn’t seem to be a clear way forward other than to allocate a budget for selective post promotion alongside any existing Facebook advertising that you may do. However, don’t do this without some careful planning and first understanding what leads you are currently gaining from Facebook – as with all channels, you need to measure this. If you don’t, you may end up lining Facebook’s pockets without understanding if your dental practice is actually benefiting by attracting new patients or selling new treatments to existing ones.

It’s also worth remembering that other channels such as Twitter, have publicly stated that they will never filter updates and all will be shown. So if you’re concentrating on Facebook to the exclusion of these channels, then it might well be time to reevaluate.

Another recent Facebook change

Facebook has also announced that it will be giving preference to useful article in news feeds – so posts that contain links to popular, authoritative articles will be given preference to your post about the office party or your latest offer. Whilst this is also disconcerting on face value, for those who are using Facebook to broadcast high quality content, this may actually be a positive move.

Summary

Facebook gives with one hand but takes with the other. Small businesses rejoiced when Facebook significantly relaxed the rules for running competitions a few months back but now face the prospect of having the majority of their content filtered from fans feeds unless they pay up. Unfortunately there is no easy way around this, so if you have already established a loyal fan base and want to ensure that your content reaches them, be prepared to allocate a budget. However, don’t just throw money at it without putting appropriate conversion measurement in place.

Please call the Dental Media team on 01332 672548 for more information about setting up and running a successful social media marketing campaign for your practice.