Uh Oh, What Is Facebook Doing To Your Organic Reach Now?
Are you sitting down? Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but Facebook announced yesterday that they’re messing with your good old, precious organic reach once again!
Don’t panic though – it isn’t quite as bad as you might think.
Facebook isn't technically reducing your reach, as such...
...What they are doing now is redefining the way they, err, ‘define’, the whole measurement of reach numbers in the first place.
Historically, page reach has been defined as ‘based on how many times a post was delivered in News Feed’.
This is at odds with the way Facebook defines reach for adverts – which is only if the ad actually physically enters the user’s screen.
Starting Monday 12th February, Facebook are updating their definition of organic reach so that it matches the way they measure paid reach i.e only if it makes it onto someone’s screen.
This makes a lot of sense as, to be honest, the previous measurement was a bit flaky and would have given people inflated numbers. It’s also logical for it to be consistent between paid and organic posts.
HOWEVER…it means that, yep, just when you were recovering from ‘Reachmageddon’ earlier this year, your reach numbers are likely to be deflating yet again.
For the next few months, Facebook will show you reach by both the old and the new definitions in your Page Insights so you’ll be able to see exactly how this change is affecting you.
[Image from https://www.facebook.com/business/news/improving-page-insights-to-help-businesses-understand-the-results-that-matter-most]
Incidentally, they have just redesigned the whole mobile Page Insights interface so that will look a bit different next time you visit, too (in a good way, from what I’ve seen so far).
Now, similar to the way the last news feed updates and the crackdown on ‘like and share’ engagement bait have been missed or misinterpreted by a lot of page admins - I’ve seen for myself with the number of people asking what has happened with their posts, saying they heard FB is getting rid of ads or continuing to post engagement bait - no doubt this will go unnoticed too, and you will probably witness even more people complaining that no-one is seeing their posts over the next couple of months.
If you do, help a friend out and feel free to give them a nudge in this direction so they can find out why 😉
As ever, if you’ve got any questions, don’t hesitate to shoot me a message on any of my social media or by email:
Facebook/IG: @GoRunDMG
Twitter: @Gil_RunDMG
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gil-david
Email: gil@run-dmg.com
[See the official Facebook announcement on this here: 'Improving Page Insights to Help Businesses Understand the Results that Matter Most']