Facebook Post “Reach” Is Declining and What to Do About it

Consider “Boosting” Posts regularly

As you may have noticed, while social media use and engagement continue to rise, Facebook organic (not boosted) reach has been on the decline.

 Some see this as a negative, but it’s not. Facebook, now a public company, has had to grow up and actually meet quarterly earnings. So, they’ve decreased the ability of brands to get the kind of reach they once had without spending some money.

We’ve tracked our client pages and we’ve seen this decline first hand. It matches what’s being reported by Social@Ogilvy, Altimeter Group and other reputable research firms.

 So, here’s what we recommend.

Don’t buy the hype.

But do consider buying more boosted posts (not ads). We’ve decided to encourage boosted posts, while not raising our service prices to accommodate this change.

We are building strategies that encourage effective and regular boosts as well as minimal increases in the investment. We suggest setting a budget amount (can be as little as $50/month or more, but understand the more you boost, the more potential reach) that works for your business budget.

 You can still be successful on Facebook without boosting more posts. Great content can still be shared and therefore reach more people. But, it’s much harder now.

We’ve experimented quite a bit now for the past year with boosted posts and the results are quite dramatic. A small investment usually produces large results in terms of reach.

Here’s an example:

We boosted the post above for $40 for a total reach of 5,768. More than 90% of the reach was from the boost.

Facebook’s boosted posts feature doesn’t always perform the same. Some posts experience more success than others. It’s difficult to know exactly what you will get from your post.

The good news is Facebook gives you projections with each post you boost. We find them to be fairly reasonable. Most of the time they perform in the mid, to upper range of their projections.

For example, they projected a reach of 1,100-1,800 on a $10 boost for a post we published this week. We ended up with 1,534.

As always, we’re here to make your life easier, help you succeed, and give you a greater value on your time. Being relevant, consistent, and responsive on social media is something we all need, but it may not be the greatest value for your time or your top priority.

We’d love to hear your ideas for effectively using Boosted Posts. Comment below.