You may have noticed that the organic reach of your Facebook business page is dwindling. It may seem like no matter how creative, graphic or entertaining your content is, the vast majority of your customers do not or will not see it.
Well, you’re right. The Facebook newsfeed algorithm is constantly changing and, it seems, always putting businesses at a disadvantage. Singlegrain.com even created (or shared, at least) a formula for it: News Feed Visibility= IxPxCxTxR, which factors in the interest, post, type of content and how recent it was. Complicated, right? With the continual death spiral of truly free marketing opportunities on Facebook, is it time to shutter your business page once and for all?
Nope.
Trying to figure out the algorithm can be frustrating, but there are plenty of good reasons to keep your business’ Facebook page. Just look at the numbers: There are nearly 2 billion monthly Facebook users, more than 54 million business pages and millions of snippets of content posted every day. Besides that, whether you see them or not, many of your customers are there and they may be looking for content like yours.
Even so, many marketers are suggesting businesses give up on Facebook. Eat24 is probably the most famous of those, after their breakup letter to the social media giant went viral. Their main source of contention was flawed, however: it was a business breaking up with Facebook because Facebook was no longer a social media channel. They didn’t want to view it as a business channel.
Most marketers and business owners are frustrated with the Facebook algorithm because of the underlying premise: it means that Facebook has more control over the content and who sees it than the posters. But what other media is any different? If you want to get your message across the way you want it to be seen, you have to pay for it.
Remember that Facebook is still a powerful, customizable and relatively affordable marketing tool. You can target your audience in a variety of ways through the Facebook advertising tools and it is still the best way to personalize your brand.
Also, before you consider deleting your Facebook page, ask yourself a few questions:
- Do you see people visiting your site from your Facebook page?
- Is the number of people that like or follow your page increasing?
- Is your audience interacting with your content?
- Are your customers asking you questions on your page, or leaving comments about how good and/or bad their experience was?
- And finally: do you enjoy it?
Chances are, the answer to most, if not all of those questions is yes. Facebook isn’t the perfect advertising vehicle and it may be confounding at times to try to decipher why your content isn’t getting the reaction you hoped, but it’s still a great way to talk to your customers and, for that reason alone, it’s worth keeping track of.
Have you ever thought of deleting your Facebook page? Why or why not? Let us know in the comments!