Stop The Facebook Madness

A few days ago, I heard about a top executive at a digital advertising agency who referred to Facebook "paid-per-reach campaigns" as "paid likes." You might think: "So what? What's the difference?" Let me tell you ... the difference is so enormous that is not even funny to see how Facebook has confused digital marketing executives with its algorithm changes extravaganza. The saddest thing is not that the term used by the ad executive was "paid likes" instead of "paid reach," but that the context in which the term was placed within the conversation implied that the likes were somehow fake. The confusion in the industry is understandable. It has been hard for many people in the industry to keep up with the perhaps too frequent algorithm changes. Just for the sake of all the social media strategists out there, let's clarify the madness to their bosses and clients, so nobody ever thinks that you are "buying social love." We do not "buy" the likes. We buy impressions to deliver your message to a relevant audience(s), and the users reached will decide whether they want to like/follow your page or not.

Let's go back to the digital advertising basics. 

Marketers "buy" impressions so a particular online message reaches their target audience, right? The same exact deal applies to Facebook. Fair or not, it is what it is, and if advertisers want to keep playing in the Facebook sandbox, they will have to follow the rules or leave.

R.I.P. Facebook Organic Reach. This is actually the root of the problem. 
A post’s organic reach reflects how often a brand's message will be seen by its page's audience without a "pay to reach" effort, and according to the latest number reported by Social@Ogilvy, which tracked the drop earlier this year, that reach is currently close to 2% for pages with over 500,000 followers.

What to Expect 

The Facebook free ride is over for marketers, and brands better start preparing for the day when the organic reach will be zero. Marketing teams will need to add this outlet to their paid channel list and their advertising budget in order to continue engaging their hard-earned audiences. "There's no such thing as a free lunch," someone said once, and Facebook listened. We should have known better!