Did Facebook Just Pull The Plug On Business Pages?

I’m not sure if you have noticed recently, but Facebook Pages have undergone something quite spectacular in the past few weeks. Apparently it is all down to a recent algorithm change, however nothing official has been released yet, so it is entirely speculation.

My personal experience shows a noticeable decline in reach on updates and posts, some posts on my StartMeInBusiness Fanpage were only seen 105 times, which with over 2,000 fans, leaves a lot to be desired and a huge question mark over exactly what is going on!

Armed with my fan reach information, I decided to check into other business/brand pages that I manage and which have been performing well over the past few months with organic delivery of updates.

Pre Facebook Algorithm Change

Post Change (same page)

RESULT:  Similar findings,with the addition of a decline in engagement and an increase in the promoted post reach tenfold.

So what’s happened?

My gut feeling is that Facebook are encouraging Businesses and Brands to increase their use of Facebook advertising opportunities such as sponsored stories, promoted posts and their new style Facebook ads that incorporates offers.

This therefore increase their revenue model and sets businesses with huge advertising budgets in their line of fire!

Here are todays stats from Page Data showing the increase and decrease on the top fan-pages for brands and businesses alike.

What Can You Do To Help Sustain Fan-page Growth?

Well, no-one really knows right now. Here are a few guidelines for managing your Facebook Business Page. Hold out until there is an official update before making any radical changes.

1. Get ready for it. Many organic page posts are about to decrease anywhere between 5% and as high as 40% Apparently pages following best practices will remain largely unaffected. ( Social@Ogilvy)
2. Facebook is growing it’s organic/paid ratio, where 80% of the newsfeed is organic and 20% is made up of sponsored stories, promoted posts and such.
3. Brands will need to develop their target accordingly and model it to the news-feed.
4. Posting will need to be done at optimal times, so analytics will need to be monitored closely via Page Insights for your fan-page.
5. Try to post audio, photo, video twice a day at optimum times where possible.
6. Use Promoted Posts and sponsored stories to reach a wider audience. Carry out a small test with videos, audio, photo, text at various times of day to suit your audience demographics and find a suitable budget. Create a model based on these results.

I will be investigating this further and will post again when I have some updated information and some hardfast guidelines.

What have you experienced on your Fanpage for Business? Share your story below.