Since its launch in 2007, Facebook’s Pages have promised businesses a free online presence with which to connect to customers, offering the opportunity to publish updates and promotional content directly into their news feeds. Yet for the past year, SMBs have seen the organic (i.e., unpaid) reach of their posts diminish significantly.
The data supports this conclusion. In fact, Facebook has been slashing organic reach for years. Research conducted by Ogilvy & Mather shows that changes to Facebook’s algorithm have reduced the average exposure of unpaid posts from 12% in October of 2013 to around 6% in February 2015. In April 2015, eMarketer published data collected by Adobe showing an average organic reach of 4.3% for posts by retailers, which lead all other industries surveyed (tech, hospitality, and financial services all fell below 4%).
