Blogs,Funeral

R.I.P. Facebook Organic Reach

Less than one percent: That’s the organic reach of business-related organic (aka “free” posts) today on Facebook. Now that you can no longer count on the service to provide free marketing, it’s time to review your options.

Yes, it’s that bad. Business-related posts on Facebook simply get no visibility anymore, thanks to a variety of changes the service has made over the past several years. (And when you’re reading this, remember: organic = free.)

In all honesty, it’s been a very long time since such posts had any strong engagement on Facebook at all.

Over a five-month period from October 2013 to February 2014, Facebook’s algorithm changes prompted a 49 percent drop-off in organic reach. Another huge drop occurred from January 2016 to July 2017, with a 52 percent decline from that already diminished number.

Why did this happen? Well, analysts say it shouldn’t all be chalked up to the obvious reason, but let’s face reality: There’s a reason it’s obvious.

Facebook makes money—a whole lot of money—from paid advertising, so it wants to encourage businesses to advertise and to “boost” posts, which means you pay to give those posts much more visibility.

It doesn’t get paid if you simply submit free posts for marketing and business purposes, so now such posts go almost entirely unseen by your funeral home’s followers.

That might seem almost cruel, but Facebook is a business like any other, and it has no responsibility to provide free advertising. If it wants to encourage personal/social sharing and discourage free business marketing, it has every right to do so.

With that said, there’s another clear reason why business posts now get so little organic reach. Facebook is simply drowning in content. It has 60 million active business pages. Over 350 million photos get uploaded to the site every day.

That means very little real estate on readers’ news feeds, and thus only a tiny fraction of business posts ever get seen.

The key takeaway is simple: Virtually none of your funeral home’s free posts will get seen, unless your followers actively go to your page on a regular basis.

With that said, it’s still a good idea to keep posting occasionally, especially when you have content people are likely to comment on and share. Those posts will have a higher likelihood of showing up in feeds. When you post, think quality over quantity.

If you have a post you really want to be seen—a big sale for a given month, a coupon, some other promotion—you should set aside some of your ad budget and “boost” it.

Facebook remains a good platform for educating people on preneeds in particular, so consider employing some selectively boosted posts for that purpose.

(Note: Ready to supercharge the leads you get from the internet and convert them into real-life clientele? In his free webinar, marketing expert Welton Hong delivers practical techniques you can employ today. Click here to register!)

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