Facebook Zero:
Pondering Life After the Demise of Organic Reach
By Marshall Manson
Managing Director, Social@Ogilvy, EAME
5 March 2014
Organic reach of the content brands publish in Facebook is destined to reach zero. It’s only a matter of time.
Average Organic Reach of Content Published on Facebook Brand Pages |
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Analysis of 100+ Facebook Brand Pages around the world with more than 48 million total fans conducted by Social@Ogilvy in February 2014. Full details in the Appendix of this report. |
In 2012, Facebook famously restricted organic reach of content published from brand pages to about 16 percent.1 In December 2013, another round of changes reduced it still more. By February 2014, according to a Social@Ogilvy analysis, organic reach hovered at 6 percent, a decline of 49 percent from peak levels in October. For large pages with more than 500,000 Likes, organic reach hit 2 percent in February. (Full details of our study are in the Appendix.) And Facebook sources were unofficially advising community managers to expect it to approach zero in the foreseeable future.
The ability to build communities of fans, and then maintain contact and encourage engagement using content published to fans’ news feeds was a critical aspect of Facebook’s early appeal to marketers. The opportunity of achieving engagement at scale motivated many brands and corporates to invest millions in developing communities and providing for care and feeding via always-on content.
With the impending end of organic reach, what are the consequences for marketers and others who use Facebook to connect with their communities? Is Facebook still a driver of “earned” conversation and word of mouth? Or is it just a straightforward paid channel? How should communities approach content and engagement going forward?
This paper attempts to explore those and other questions, and to provide some practical recommendations for maximising the value of social media in this ever-evolving landscape.
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Facebook Zero: Pondering Life After the Demise of Organic Reach, (pdf, 455KB)