17 Nov Is Facebook Organic Reach Dead?
We were the first to report on Facebook’s massive decline in organic reach a couple of years ago. At that point, reach stood at about 3% of fans and the outlook was bleak. We’d just discovered a 44% decline in overall reach and were a far cry from the 16% organic reach experienced when brand pages were first launched. Those were the hay days. Many in the industry speculated that it wouldn’t be too long before it was completely dead.
So, whatever happened to organic reach? Are your posts organically reaching your followers at all? The answer that we’ve concluded is that Facebook organic reach is not completely dead, but it is on life support. Our calculations of brand page organic reach (posts without paid support) ranged from 1% to 2.8% this year. For the most part, it hovered just over 1% and February, at 2.8%, appeared to be more of an outlier. Below are the monthly reach calculations for the brand pages we tracked from January to September.
What do brands need to do with this information? Know your numbers. Odds are that if it’s a brand that has always thrived well with organic reach, your numbers are closer to 3%. If not, they are likely under 1%. Brands with smaller followings likely will see higher reach numbers. If you want to increase your reach percentages, there are best practices but you’ll also want to consider a paid strategy.
Although marketers are still a little scarred from the massive drops in organic reach over the years, there is something to be said about the scalability, target ability and agility of Facebook’s ad platform. Even a little can go a long way. You can spend as little as $100 or go up into the millions depending on your budget and goals. Need help determining a budget? We’ve written a few posts to help you out.
So, in essence, we haven’t hit rock bottom when it comes to organic reach in Facebook, at least in 2015. 2016 will be another story. Stay tuned.
