Question: We know that (seemingly) everyone on the planet is on Facebook, but we find little to no engagement with our Facebook page. Is it time to put our Facebook page on the shelf?
There has definitely been a lot of change in how Facebook Company Pages work for businesses; especially small businesses.
One statistic that I read was only about 1.5% of people who like your Facebook page (on average) ever return to the page. This means that even if your business has a thousand likes, only about 15 will ever return. That in itself is not a great starting point.
More recently as Facebook has tried to boost its ad revenue they have made it even harder for small businesses to have their content seen on Facebook.
In 2012, Facebook for Business told the world that about 16% of posts on your company page organically reach fans. Now this isn’t representative of who will click on your post, this is merely the number of people who will have the post show up in your stream. Unfortunately at the end of 2013 an update to the way Facebook does their algorithm brought that 16% down by approximately 44% meaning now it is only around 10% of your fans that see your posts.
In this article posted end of 2013 in AdAge, further clarity is given as to what to expect from your Facebook page.
Conclusion: Clearly the reach of Facebook is going down for businesses looking to use the “Free” platform to build new customer relationships. While disappointing, I can’t say this is surprising. As a small business, or really any business for that matter I would suggest posting your content and interesting articles to your Facebook page, but I wouldn’t spend too much time focusing on the channel unless you are willing to invest.
Additionally, the more niche your product is, the more Facebook becomes a tricky marketing proposition.
I always tell companies to focus on where their audience is, and while it may feel like your audience is on Facebook, with reach being crippled and most people not actually returning to your page, I think there are better places to put your time and energy in order to get the results you are looking for.
What is your Facebook strategy? Are you spending time or money their to grow your business? Join the conversation below.
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Daniel Newman is the co-founder of V3*Broadsuite and is an experienced C-level executive, serving as a strategy consultant for small and mid-sized businesses. He’s also an insight/analyst partner to four Fortune 50 enterprises and previously served as the co-founder and CEO of EC3, a hosted IT and communications services provider. Prior to that, he served as the CEO of United Visual, Inc. in Chicago Illinois.
He is a widely published writer who contributes weekly to Forbes, Entrepreneur, Huffington Post and industry publications such as Commercial Integrator, Sound & Communication and Corporate Tech Decisions. He’s also author of three best-selling business books including The New Rules of Customer Engagement, The Millennial CEO, and just recently Evolve: Marketing (^as we know it) is Doomed.
Daniel has established a reputation as a leading thinker in topics such as Social, Big Data, Cloud and Mobile. He has been named to many top influencer lists in all of these areas, including recognition by the Huffington Post as one of the 100 business and leadership accounts to follow on Twitter. He is also an adjunct professor of management at North Central College.
