If you’re a Facebook page manager, I feel your pain of constantly wondering how to get around Facebook’s ever-changing algorithm.  It feels like organic reach is just decreasing at a constant rate these days, and engaging your followers can seem like the task that can never be conquered.  To make it easy for you, I’ll walk you through Facebook’s decision process.

Steady decline in organic reach of Facebook page posts, from Feb 2012 to Mar 2014

First of all, let’s think like the typical Facebook user.  If you first signed up for Facebook in its beginning stages, you probably remember the thrill of it being the new social media outlet where friends and family could keep up to date with what each other are doing – not a space for companies to utilize marketing tactics.

Facebook is well aware of its users becoming overly frustrated with the commercialization of the site, with the ability for pages to boost their posts and have their advertisements show up throughout news feeds.  Yes, it is the choice of the user to “LIKE” the page in the first place, but it often gets tiresome when advertisements mix in with friends’ activities.

Knowing this, Facebook has continuously altered its algorithm to weed out posts that convey push advertising, but it is okay with posts that are brand and community building that offer a chance for engagement.  These are the posts that consumers are really interested in.  So when developing a post schedule, make sure that you keep the majority of posts, around 80%, sans advertising and post regularly (avoiding spamming people – 3 posts a day MAX) to ensure that your posts will no longer diminish from news feeds from now on.

Good luck digital marketers!