There are still plenty of small business owners that are trying to save money by using Facebook as the company website. That used to work to some extent, but it doesn’t anymore. Kind of like a new trick becoming an old dog.
Here’s why:
Ownership
You don’t own your Facebook Company Page. Facebook owns it. All of the posts, photos, videos, events and all of those connections could be gone in a heartbeat if Mark Zuckerburg decides it’s just not worth it anymore. Even if YOU decide to shut down your Facebook page, everything that was ever posted is still alive somewhere in the massive Facebook servers. And don’t think they won’t stay there for eternity.
You might have the illusion of control, but Facebook algorithms decide who gets to see what. And it’s becoming more complicated to predict what posts might get better interaction over others. That interaction is what affects the reach of any given post.
Reach
This is how rapidly Facebook reach for Company pages has declined.
If you already have a Facebook Company page, you can see at the bottom of each post what its reach is. Reach is the number of news feeds your post shows up on. What do you think the percentage is of your followers who see each of your posts? Go ahead do the math. Would you believe that at the beginning of 2015 most company pages were only seeing a FIVE percent post reach? Facebook has decided that most people don’t want all that clutter in their news feeds and Facebook decides who sees what based on complicated mathematical equations that change constantly.
Remember. Very few people actually visit a Company page after the first time they come to it to like it. Many website widgets also make it unnecessary to EVER visit a company page. You need to depend on Facebook to show your post to the people who likeyour page. And that just isn’t happening unless you pay Facebook to increase your reach.
Pay to Play
Yup. Many businesses are upset that post reach went on such a sharp decline about two years ago. Companies who owned Facebook pages had bought ads to increase likes to their pages thinking this would be enough. But it wasn’t. They figured that every time they posted that update should appear on everyone’s wall who had liked the page. It didn’t. Not even close and the numbers continue to fall on how far your organic reach goes.
Even posts with moderate interaction aren’t even cracking the 2% reach on this popular page. Yes, that’s me on the far right doing my daytime job.
I should know. I manage a consumer brand page with over 35,000 Likes and without boosting, but with lots of interaction, we still only see around a two percent reach.
Now these same companies that spent thousands of dollars just to grow the number of page likes had to spend thousands more to reach them with posts. It has truly become Pay to Play for businesses. And small business owners who don’t have that kind of money are being left behind in the competition for Facebook users’ attentions.
This all leads back to owning the space you place your message and only renting it. You have complete control over the information and the Call to Actions on your website. Social Media is great for leading visitors there. But that SM channel could disappear at any time.
The Bone
It’s that simple. The vast majority of your followers will not see your latest post. But when that same info is on your website or blog, you have complete control of what is seen.