Facebook wants you!

Yes, they certainly do. Facebook wants YOU...to spend money.

If you haven't already heard, Facebook has been changing their engagement formula (or whatever the heck you wanna call it) over the last few months. In short - posts from brand pages are getting less and less engagement and reach from their "page likers", simply because those that like the page don't get to see what the brand is posting near as often as they used to.

As an example: most of the posts from our corporate brand page used to reach approximately 1,500-3,500 users (at least according to what Facebook would tell us). Now-a-days, we're lucky if that number creeps above 700-1,000.

I'm sure that there are a lot of theories as to why they would change this, but let's just call it - Facebook wants money. They want you to sponsor your posts to be able to get in front of the people that 'like' your page. Which, didn't those same people already tell Facebook they wanted to see your posts when they 'liked' the page in the first place? Now we've just made it harder for those that actually want to see your content. Not only do they need to like your page (or be friends with someone that likes your page), but the brand is likely going to have to pay to be able to actually broadcast their message.

*sigh*

I see this potentially going one of four ways:

1. Brands will have to establish a new strategy for how they use their Facebook pages. Primarily looking at finding different types of content that will still maintain a higher level engagement/reach than just text posts or blog/link shares. This may include leveraging other channels more often for content sharing (such as Twitter or LinkedIn) to increase overall reach.

or

2. Brands will have to sponsor most of their posts if they actually want people to see them.

or

3. Keep doing what their are doing which may cause them to fail, especially if their only social media channel is on Facebook.

4. Combination of 1 & 2.

So, what is your brand doing to increase your social reach on Facebook?