Face it, you’ve probably done fairly well from posting your business updates and products organically on Facebook these past few years but it appears you’re going to face some severe restrictions in the very near future. When it comes to promoting your business products and services your business page is going to see far less organic reach based on the changes Facebook has recently proposed.

In brief, Facebook’s goal is to reduce the amount of time people spend on their social media platform but make the experience much more meaningful than just sat passively scrolling through a news feed. People to people posts, certainly ones in your network, will get a higher ranking than page to people posts.

To help you overcome the problem of a further limited reach for your business page, here are a few ideas to help reduce the impact:

Tips to reduce the impact of Facebook’s changes

  1. Facebook is keen to prioritise family and friends updates over business page posts in a bid to retain its audience and maximise user engagement. I’d say you’ll probably need to bite the bullet and post about your products and services from your own individual user account… just exclude anyone you personally know who might get irritated by this and don’t overdo it.
  2. Facebook’s Head of News Feed, Adam Mosseri, has stated here that:
    “Pages may see their reach, video watch time and referral traffic decrease.” Only time will tell for each Page, it may be catastrophic for you or have a little less impact, it all comes down to how much conversation is generated between your Facebook followers on your Page posts.
  3. You’ll need to post less frequently, posting many times a week without showing any real level of engagement (discussions or interactions on your page) is going to cause you problems. Think quality, not quantity.
  4. Asking for comments (aka engagement bait) will very likely result in even less views of your Page posts – so instead of asking for comments, I’d suggest you post a question to encourage a response.
  5. Look to use Facebook Live, its online streaming video facility, this is where Facebook really wants a business page to head.
  6. Pay up! The web is becoming more and more a pay to play experience for lots of businesses – learn how to create Facebook paid ads that really work to funnel traffic to your website!
  7. Create a business group to allow people to communicate and exchange ideas on your posts there instead.
  8. Host a local business event and promote this on your page then– you can always ask people to RSVP in the comments – you’d think this should give your organic reach a nice boost!

I imagine if you think you can add “vanilla” comments to your Page posts in a bid to fool Facebook in a bid to expand your organic reach, think again. Even asking friends or staff to post a comment will likely be under scrutiny, it won’t take much for Facebook to scan your personal network.

Yes, the future of Facebook looks somewhat bleak but who knows, we may just find they relax their algorithms rules over time and we can all get back to normal, in the meantime you’ll just have to master Facebook live video and ads!

So what do YOU think will happen? We’d love to hear your thoughts.

If you need some help with your Facebook management and advertising, get in touch with our team to find out more about our Social Media services. Call us on 01285 50 55 50.