Facebook wants your money and they're going to get it
As anyone who manages Facebook pages has noticed over the last few months, they are basically killing your organic reach. The drop has been rather dramatic and worrisome for those who have invested so much time and effort into the platform over the years. This chart from Ogilvy is pretty sobering.
Organic reach of the content brands publish in Facebook is destined to hit zero. It’s only a matter of time.
In 2012, Facebook famously restricted organic reach of content published from brand pages to about 16 percent. In December 2013, another round of changes reduced it even more.
By February 2014, according to a Social@Ogilvy analysis of more than 100 brand pages, organic reach hovered at 6 percent, a decline of 49 percent from peak levels in October. For large pages with more than 500,000 Likes, organic reach hit 2 percent in February. And Facebook sources were unofficially advising community managers to expect it to approach zero in the foreseeable future.
Basically, Facebook is letting everyone know that the free ride is over. They built a product we all rely on and and have gimped it to the point that it's rapidly approaching uselessness in terms of engagement. Managers and marketers would do well to start thinking of Facebook as yet another paid media channel. Facebook wants your money and they'll most likely get it.
This won't be much of a problem for larger enterprises. Coca Cola or American Idol or GEICO will pay the piper. But, this will definitely stir up conversations among much smaller entities like non profits that have invested much of their engagement strategy around Facebook.
We all knew this day was coming and now "Facebook Zero" has finally arrived.
Facebook Zero: Considering Life After the Demise of Organic Reach (social@Ogilvy)