Tag Archives: Jenn Nelson

Is Organic Reach Dead On Facebook? Is This A Legit Question?

Organic Reach

Is organic reach dead on Facebook?  Do you have to spend advertising dollars to reach anyone on Facebook now?  I hear people say this more and more….  As I’ve written here before I participate weekly in a live Twitter chat and broadcast on Periscope called #LetsLivestream.  It’s always a good discussion with many great guests and nice production value hosted by Jonathan Tripp, and once in a while a topic or a take in the conversation gets me thinking about a blog post.  This week the topic was promotion of your live streams – best practices for promoting, various tools etc.  Question 4 is the one that got me going:

Organic Reach

Here was my answer:

Organic Reach

A bit of a contrarian view perhaps (Wait – MOI?  A contrarian view?), and even though I referenced Periscope in my tweet (keep in mind the livestream takes place ON Periscope), I continued on to include Facebook Live in my point in the chat.  At that point my esteemed friend Jenn Nelson of @JennsLIVE & @WineAntics who helps produce the show chimed in with the comment “ORGANIC REACH IS DEAD ON FACEBOOK!!!”  And then this happened:

Organic ReachOrganic ReachOrganic ReachOrganic Reach

This was going nowhere.  We agreed to continue the discussion offline after the show which we did.

So Is Organic Reach Indeed Dead On Facebook?

I sent her these screen shots of recent analytics for our Facebook page with the organic reach numbers – these represent all the posts we made on the Frameable Faces page from 10/3/17 to 11/14/17:

Organic Reach

Note that as of this writing we have a TOTAL of 1792 followers of our page.  You too can be a follower!  Give us a “Like”!!!  Okay sorry that was very shameless and spammy.  I digress.  But the point is you’ll note in the numbers above that virtually ALL of our reach has been non-paid.  There is one sliver of darker orange that represents a bit of boosted / paid reach when we spent a couple dollars to get one post going a little.  In this snapshot of time the reach on our posts range anywhere from 188 at the lowest to 2.6k at the highest and roughly half of these were Livestreams.  The livestreams didn’t have the peaks and valleys that the other posts did, generally ranging between a more consistent 500-1000.  Meanwhile, YES – we still get plenty of organic reach and a handful of posts still go beyond the followers of our page without paying on Facebook!

Is This Even A Legit Question?

Now here is where the debate gets interesting.  Jenn’s point which is shared by many is that Facebook doesn’t just automatically dole out free reach for your business page anymore.  And she’s right to a point.  Little by little Facebook has pulled back on how much they’ll push your content out to your followers, and many feel like it’s become closer and closer to a full on pay-to-play model to get any reach.  Each time the announcement / rumor comes out that they’ve tweaked the algorithm again my response is the very same every time:  Crappy content continues to get less organic reach on #Facebook. Good content still gets plenty. frameablefaces.com/2017-11-16-organic-reach-dead-facebook/ Share on X

So my question is what IS organic reach?  See the following conversation between Jenn and me:

Organic ReachOrganic Reach

How great is Jenn?  Give her a like / follow!  But here’s the question (to her point), a typical post of hers might only reach 40 people on Facebook on its own.  That’s what Facebook is just handing her out of the gate.  I would still argue that that is still not purely an automatic just because she posted – those 40 people on some level have to be 1) followers that have 2) likely shown some affinity towards her page through their Facebook behavior.  Now once someone shares it it may bump right up to 200 and so on.  Isn’t that STILL “organic”?  In other words, good content that compels people to share will still gain reach organically.  If that’s not still considered organic then what’s the point of even talking about “organic reach”?  As I said to Jenn what’s the point of even creating content in the first place if no one is going to share it?  If a post falls in the Facebook Forest and no one sees it did it really happen?  Shares, likes, comments – engagement – is part of the deal with organic.  That’s the reason we do this in the first place.

Which brings us back to the same old tried and true principle of Facebook and ALL social media in general.  Make sure you are entertaining, teaching, engaging – providing value with good content and you will still get that organic reach!!!!  I created this meme a while back as kind of my favorite quote for small businesses – kind of my little calling card….  follow this and yes – there is still organic reach to be had everywhere on social media.  Even on Facebook.

Organic Reach

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Frameable Faces Photography
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Frameable Faces Photography is a small biz retail mom & pop shop of Doug&Ally Cohen located in the Orchard Mall in West Bloomfield, Michigan, United States Of America!
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Ally & Doug can be reached at the studio at tel:248-790-7317 or emailed at mailto:info@frameablefaces.com
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Being “Frameable” is an attitude, a community, a way of life – a life you would want to celebrate and display on your walls for all to see!  Tell us… ARE YOU FRAMEABLE?
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Join the Frameable Faces Community – sign up for our email newsletter for the best of the week in the Frameable Faces World!  Click here!

Our Appearance On #LetsLivestream! A Recap And Follow Up Comments

We have been live streaming on Periscope (and now Facebook Live too) for almost two years and the best thing about it has been meeting all the great people we’ve met from around the world.  We continue to broadcast live 5-6 days per week and we continue to meet new people like Rachel Moore whom we met just within the last few months.  Rachel has a social media marketing company called Really Social in Colorado and she hosts a Twitter Chat and live stream show every Wednesday afternoon at 3 PM EST called LetsLivestream.  Once we connected she started inviting me to join the weekly conversations which then led to her asking us to be guests on the show.  We happily accepted and it was a great discussion on Live Streaming for small businesses which is something I’ve learned a lot about in the last couple years…

Our Appearance on LetsLivestream!

Here is the actual replay of the show from Facebook Live if you want to check it out:

The format of the show is pretty cool – Rachel asks 8 questions about the topic and then anyone watching the show can tweet their own answers to participate with an A1 – A8 and the hashtag #LetsLivestream on twitter.  Here is a Storify slideshow of the questions along with my twitter answers and some of the others that were tweeted if you want to just flip through:

 

Meanwhile just to summarize some of my main points (and a few follow up ones)….

How We Live Stream and What You Should Consider If You Are Thinking About It For Your Business

What is Live Streaming?

We have been live streaming now since April 2015 just one week after Periscope was launched by Twitter.  At its simplest form you download the app, login, give your broadcast a title, hit the “start broadcast” button and start recording with the camera on your phone.  Only you’re not just recording, you’re broadcasting LIVE to the people who follow your account, and they can make comments with their keyboard that you can see on your screen!  Completely interactive.  We’ve met people far and wide around the world doing this as our brand Frameable Faces – you can check out our channel here.  The same thing goes for Facebook when you select the “Live” option and you can broadcast to your Facebook friends, fans of your business page and even groups you’re a member of.  The options are many and they keep growing and morphing to other platforms as well (Instagram, YouTube etc.).

What’s the Strategy?

As our audience grew we started to develop shows and concepts, a schedule of broadcasting and ways of repurposing the replays on our blog and elsewhere to promote our studio.  On the LetsLivestream show I discuss various elements of the strategy including the benefits, how you can grow a community around your brand, how small businesses have a big advantage since you can do this with barely any budget and connect with your audience without five levels of approval and red tape that big corporations have to deal with.  Live Streaming as with other forms of social media is a way to promote what you do and drive traffic to your owned online assets such as a website and self hosted blog – in our case they are both right here at frameablefaces.com.

What Exactly Should You Live Stream About?

If you’re a small business share your expertise, be fun and be vulnerable – it’s LIVE so it won’t be perfect, and your imperfections can make you real.  People will see how you react to questions and situations and they will want to work with you if you acquit yourself well.  Involve your clients, show your process, go behind the scenes, highlight your partners, vendors, even your friendly competition!  Show variety and provide value!!!  Where many business owners who try to create content online fail is that they don’t look at their services and products as vehicles to tell stories and build community!  If you do this you won’t run out of things to say like so many do.  Your strategy will be sustainable when you look to your community for content and then give back to your community.  The cool part is you can build community fast with live streaming because it’s such a visceral and participatory experience.

Be social – DUH…

We didn’t really discuss this on LetsLivestream and it should be obvious but you.  Must.  Be.  Social.  On. Social Media.  With Live Streaming you need to network, network, network – go into other broadcasts and watch others.  Jump in and join in the real time conversation – other broadcasters are very appreciative when people contribute to their show with comments that are on point.  You’ll start to meet and connect with other people watching and commenting in the broadcasts who share your interests and you’ll join each other’s communities!  You cannot just be a broadcaster and reach the full potential for success, just like you can’t just post stuff on Facebook without ever commenting and engaging right?  It’s the same thing on Live Streaming but it’s even more important there because it’s real time!

Hope you enjoyed this and found it valuable!  Please let me know in the comments if you have anything to add!

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Frameable Faces Photography
**********************************************
Frameable Faces Photography is a small biz retail mom & pop shop of Doug&Ally Cohen located in the Orchard Mall in West Bloomfield, Michigan, United States Of America!
************************************************
Ally & Doug can be reached at the studio at tel:248-790-7317 or emailed at mailto:info@frameablefaces.com
************************************************
***************************************­*******
Being “Frameable” is an attitude, a community, a way of life – a life you would want to celebrate and display on your walls for all to see!  Tell us… ARE YOU FRAMEABLE?
**********************************************
Join the Frameable Faces Community – sign up for our email newsletter for the best of the week in the Frameable Faces World!  Click here!