Facebook Algorithms, Organic Reach & Why It’s Time to Boost Your Posts

We’ve explored the reasons why Facebook is a vital part of a marketer’s toolkit. To recap in one sentence, there are 200-250 million monthly active users in the U.S., 15-20 million in Texas alone, and those people are spending an average of 50 minutes a day on Facebook properties (Facebook, Instagram or Messenger).

Now, let’s talk about how to overcome the changes you’ve probably noticed on your Page in the past year, such as dwindling organic reach and less engagement. Unfortunately, Facebook has realized they have a business opportunity and it has become a pay-to-play environment for businesses and brands.

Why You Need A Facebook Ads Budget

1. Less Page Fans See Your Posts – Our Facebook Marketing Expert has thrown out the number 1%; as in 1% of your Page Fans see your posts without putting money behind it – or “boosting”. If you are maintaining a Facebook Page to share news about your business, at a minimum you need a budget to boost those posts. The time spent publishing posts will have substantially less payoff without an ad budget to supplement the organic reach you used to enjoy. See Facebook’s release here.
2. There is an Ad Type for Every Marketing Objective – Facebook’s ad system has been created to generate Local Awareness, Brand Awareness, Website Conversions, Leads (In feed!), Video Views or even Engagement. It specifically targets profiles based on what YOU want to achieve. See the ad types they offer here.
3. You Can Leverage Demographic & Behavior-based Data – Unlike offline media and even Google AdWords, you’re able to target based on rich, real-time, self-reported demographic, interest and behavioral data to form awareness, preference and to drive action with a compelling visual ad. 

Why That’s Not All Bad

1. Ad Targeting is Rich – Facebook has a plethora of targeting options. The Edgerank algorithm working to serve users the most interesting topics in their News Feed, also uses the same machine learning to categorize users by interests, analyzing their Likes, Comments, Page Likes, etc. In addition to all of this “free” learning that they have from user-generated content, they have also layered in third-party data from Acxiom, Datalogix, and Epsilon for further targeting options.
2. Retargeting & Lookalike Audiences – You are able to connect with customers that have shared their information with you and find profiles that are similar to your existing customers to find more potential customers just like them!

Is your company interested in getting the most out of your Facebook presence with Facebook advertising?

Blue Sky Marketing has been managing robust and diverse Facebook ads budgets since 2014. Read our other blogs that explore Facebook ads best practices and advertising basics or contact us for details about how we can help you manage your social advertising campaigns.