Find us on Facebook…if you can!

Find us on Facebook…if you can!

by Andy Beal Advice

FACEBOOK_REACH_WEB_CHARTFINALIt’s now pretty much well known that brands on Facebook can expect to reach just 6% of their maximum audience.

As the chart to the right highlights, the free ride is over for companies, with Facebook now hoping you’ll spend some of your precious advertising dollars to promote your posts to your followers.

If you’re like us, that feels like a kick in the macadamias. After all, you can argue that without all “Find us on Facebook” promotion that brands now include with just about all other channel marketing, Facebook might not be quite as big as it is now. Of course, SEOs have been saying the same thing about Google for years, and that argument didn’t work out too well for them either.

Still, now is not the time to give up on Facebook. There are still a number of reasons to include Facebook in your marketing and reputation management efforts:

  1. Your customers may not “see” you in their feed every day, but they still expect to find you, if they need to reach you.
  2. Your Facebook page will help push down negative pages in Google. It’s still free–at least right now–to have a Facebook Page, so you may as well use it to help build a positive Google reputation.
  3. Six percent is still a number. You’re message will reach at least some of your fans, and it won’t always be the same 6%, so don’t give up.
  4. Facebook is a gateway drug. There’s still a strong chance that someone will share your post, photo, URL, to a different social network. Perhaps one that has higher engagement.
  5. Pages FeedYour true fans won’t miss your posts. If someone really is a fan of your brand, they will make a point of reading your Facebook posts each day. I, for one, make a point of clicking on my “Pages Feed” at least 3-4 times a day. I actually kind of like the fact, that I can the skim through all of the brand messages, and not have to stop to click “Like” on that photo of a friend’s adorable kid, dog, cat, parent, car, lunch, duck face. 😉

The downward engagement rates are a reminder not to put all of your marketing eggs in a single basket, but that doesn’t mean you should just give up on Facebook.

Or should you? What are your thoughts?

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ByAndy Beal

Andy Beal is The Original Online Reputation Expert™. A bestselling author of two critically-acclaimed reputation management books, a keynote speaker at dozens of events, and brand consultant experience with thousands of individuals and companies.

    3 Comments for “Find us on Facebook…if you can!”

    1. Spend money to get the likes and then spend money every time you then want to reach the people you paid to get to like your page in the first place … I use to do a LOT with Facebook, both acquired pages and built them. Now that the traffic has plummeted it’s time to move on, back to traditional SEO.

    2. Interesting post, thanks Andy – though re “I, for one, make a point of clicking on my “Pages Feed” at least 3-4 times a day”, I think you might be in a (very small) minority…

      1. Perhaps. I tend to only like Pages that I really am interested in. That way, I know that I will be interested in their updates. 😉

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