Drop In Facebook Organic Reach? SMS Marketing Can Help.
In 2015, Facebook announced that Page owners could no longer post “promotional” content on their news feeds and reach their followers without paying for advertising. If you are a business trying to reach prospects or a nonprofit trying to reach new members, you have to pay to have your content seen.
A Facebook Page’s best non-promotional posts, however, had a chance of showing up in the news feed. A business or organization could still reach their audience organically if they posted engaging content, like a viral video.
Facebook Explore Feed
Last week, Facebook launched the “Explore Feed” on desktop and mobile, which allows users to browse a second, alternative feed outside of their main news feed. The Explore Feed is a way to discover posts from Pages that users don’t follow or posts that would not normally appear on the main news feed. Finding the Explore Feed, however, takes a little bit of extra work.
Drop in Facebook Organic Reach
Soon after the launch of the Explore Feed, Facebook began testing the removal of non-ad Page posts from the main newsfeed and moving it into the hidden Explore Feed. This test took place in six countries: Sri Lanka, Bolivia, Slovakia, Serbia, Guatemala and Cambodia. Facebook says they currently have no plans to roll out the test further, but the test itself is cause for concern among publishers and developers. Results from the test showed a 60-80% drop in referral traffic according to Filip Struhárik, a journalist in Slovakia.
What might this mean for businesses and nonprofits who rely on Facebook to reach their followers? Facebook may decide to keep things the same and keep non-ad Page posts in the main news feed. Or they may one day decide not to. Either way, organizations should begin thinking of including other ways to reach their audience outside of the social network.
Start Building Your SMS Subscriber List Now
One way to make sure your content gets to the people who want to receive it is to send them regular text message updates. With SMS Marketing, potential and existing customers opt-in to receive marketing messages from you, so your content is targeted directly to the people who want to receive them.
But unlike your Facebook Page followers, your audience is sure to get the messages you send. There are no main news feeds to overlook or alternative feeds to miss. Over 98% of text messages are opened and read within 15 minutes of receipt.
Interested in learning more about SMS Marketing? Call 800-696-1393, email tmsales@textmarks.com or fill out our Contact Us Form.
