Here’s the thing. Facebook may be free to use, but they sure as hell want your money. So much so that the powers that be actually penalise pages that post (what Facebook deems to be) overly promotional organic content.
How does Facebook do this? By reducing the organic reach of those pages that post “overly promotional” content. Reduced reach, means reduced brand exposure, means reduced return on investment. So what can you do about it?
In short, if you want to reach as much or your fan base as possible you’ll need to consider investing some budget in paid Facebook advertising. If you want to ensure you maximise your FREE organic reach as much as possible, you’ll need to play by Zuckerberg’s rules.
Proceed with Caution when Adding Links
Facebook wants its users to stay on Facebook to consume content, rather than navigate away to different websites. This means pages sharing outbound links can be penalised – which can be a huge bummer for businesses who want to direct prospects to a product page.
The fix: Avoid ending every post with a link to your website. Where possible, share your link in the first comment of your post, rather than within the post itself.
Limit those Calls to Action
Calls to action are like red flags to Facebook – so if you’re including phrases like “call now”, “buy now” or “visit our website” in your organic posts, your content may be being marked as overly promotional. Similarly, Facebook may reduce the organic reach of pages who ask people to “like, share and comment” to enter competitions.
The fix: Get creative with your phrasing, and try to limit the number of calls to action you mix among relevant, content-focused posts.
Where You Schedule Matters
While tools like Buffer can be great for sending content out across multiple platforms (and saving you a bunch of time in the process), Facebook will penalize you for that too. Why? Because (a) they don’t really want to share you with competitors like Twitter, and (b) they know from experience that businesses who schedule a ton of posts via those third party tools are often publishing posts that are super promotional in nature.
The fix: Schedule your posts directly from within Facebook’s own admin. Easy as that!
It’s not all bad news
Facebook wants its platform to provide the best social experience possible for users – and that means cracking down on spammy posts that could irritate rather than engage. While the rules Zuck and the team implement to achieve this can feel like hurdle jumping for business page managers, there is a plus side. By ensuring their users are engaged, Facebook is creating an online community where people who do see your posts are more likely to respond. And that’s a win for businesses using social.