Mailing ListIf you have a Facebook page with a solid number of followers, you might have noticed that your posts haven’t been reaching as many people as before.

Facebook has just admitted that they are decreasing Page “reach” in the news feed algorithm and that trend will continue. They are suggesting that Page owners “boost” reach by paying for the boost through sponsored posts.

If you’ve paid for your fans, you’re probably ticked off. You paid to get the fans, now you have to pay again to reach the fans you already paid to get!  Frustrating, aint it.

Well, you can stay ticked off and turn your back on your fan page investment or you can turn lemons into lemonade. Time to roll with the punches. Let’s take a look at three actions you can take to handle this change without giving Facebook any more of you money than is necessary.

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3 Actions To Take To Combat Facebook’s Decreased Page Reach

  1. Push Your Mailing List – Derek Halpern at Social Triggers is all about email marketing and this type of thing is the perfect example of why that’s a smart way to market.  You own your email list and nobody can take that away.  Your traffic is not at the whim of the Facebook or Google organic algorithm, or the fluctuations of Pay Per Click pricing.  Derek suggests telling your Facebook fans what is happening and that joining your email list is the only way to ensure that they will receive your content.  You might even consider paying Facebook to boost this post, so that you can convert your existing Page fans into email subscribers.
  2. Create Better Content And Ask Your Fans To Share – Much like Google, Facebook says that because there is so much content being generated, the changes in their algorithm are there to promote better content.   So you may want to consider decreasing the frequency with which you post on Facebook and increase the value of the posts you create. And don’t forget to ask your fans to share.  Simply asking can make a big difference.
  3. Explore Twitter – Now more than ever, you’ll notice a big difference in Twitter and Facebook: TWITTER HAS NO ALGORITHM.  Twitter doesn’t decide what content it should promote based on interaction (or ad money, as seems to be the case with the new Facebook changes).  Every tweet you send goes out to all of your followers.  Keep an eye on your engagement with Twitter vs. Facebook and consider putting more resources behind the one that’s working better.

Now, I cannot say because I do not know, but it looks from the outside that this move is purely motivated by income generation on the part of Facebook.  Why do I say this?

Notice that Facebook gives you the option to indicate how much of a person’s content you want to see by selecting whether that person is a “Close Friend” or “Acquaintance”.  If you select “Close Friend”, you’ll see every post that person makes.

But Facebook does not give you this option when it comes to Pages.  You do not get the opportunity to see every post that a Page makes.  One would think that providing that option to users would make for a better experience.  I can tell you that there are a few Page posts which I would much rather see than half the stuff which shows up on my news feed.  This is probably because they think businesses will pay to guarantee those eyeballs.

Of course, our job as businesses is to get the most reach for the least investment, so we’ll see how this move effects how businesses interact on Facebook.  We’ll see what works best, but investing in more known quantities like email campaigns and Twitter.
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