Where Your Organic Reach Ends and Paid Begins

At the end of 2014, Facebook announced that it was, once again, changing its formatting in a manner that would make it virtually impossible for a fan/ business page to organically reach their followers. The days of posting a promotional flyer or a quick blurb about a recent happening and them garnering those infamous likes and comments are gone. Or are they? Can understanding the nuances of social media marketing maintain the organic reach of old, or is the only option to rely on paid post boosting to ensure your message reaches your fans?

Content IS Key

The phrase has become so commonplace these days that it almost sounds cliché. However, content truly IS king and can make a difference in your social media success.  However, the type of medium that you use in your post (i.e. text, image, link, or video) is even more essential to a post’s success and can make quite the difference in how much truly organic reach your content receives. Take your own social media browsing/scrolling for example. Are you more likely to like/comment/share a paragraph of text or an image? Are you more likely to engage with an image or a video? Chances are, that video that you find in your timeline is going to catch your attention more often over the other types of posts. The same goes for those you are trying to reach with your message. However, a video may only increase your organic reach by 10% over a text post. Are videos where organic reach ends and paid begins?

Paying the Price

According to a recent WallStreet Journal article, a large number of small business owners have resorted to paying to boost their social media posts in hopes of reaching their customers. Digital marketing budgets have grown exponentially from 2013 to 2014, and are expected to continue growing in 2015.  For example, the WSJ article mentions one entrepreneur who expects to pay $1,500 a month next year for her Facebook advertising, which is up from $1,200 this year.  Her intention is to allocate approximately three-quarters of her spending to promoted posts.

The article also mentions Mr. Bairstow, who is a representative for approximately 350 small-business clients. Mr. Bairstow makes the point that small businesses, before they were paying Facebook directly to boost posts, were still “paying” to spread their message via Facebook. Mr. Bairstow points out that many small companies “spent a lot of time investing in and engaging their audience by posting frequent status updates or messages on their firms’ Facebook pages.” Just like the saying goes, “time is money.”

What’s a Business to Do?

With so many options to consider, often it is best to invest in adding to your marketing bag of tricks, at least one team member who is versed in the ins and outs of the ever-changing social media marketplace and can put together a plan suitable for the needs of your business- and who is able to evolve that plan as the needs of your business evolve. Particularly when it comes to Facebook, the choice to pay or not to pay, may not be an “either or” scenario. Having someone who can navigate the fine line of where organic reach ends and paid begins is certainly the best choice for entrepreneurs in today’s digital world.