MGH Finds Facebook’s News Feed Change Causes Drastic Declines in

MGH has published its findings as to how Facebook’s latest algorithm change to the News Feed impacts brands on the social network. While the results are alarming – knowing organic reach rate has decreased dramatically – these findings ultimately follow a trend in social media marketing: brands need to treat Facebook just like any other marketing platform.

Background
Facebook celebrated 2018 by shaking up its News Feed in a big way. We wrote about those changes here. In summary, on Jan. 11, Mark Zuckerberg said his social media network was planning to put a greater emphasis on “more meaningful social interactions” to make time spent on the site “more valuable.” We warned brands that their pages will likely see a decrease in organic reach, referrals, traffic, engagement and video views with this update. That meant it was more important than ever for brands to take advantage of ways they could maximize their visibility. We recommended that brands: post less often, but with better content; that they would have to pay to play Facebook’s game; and that it might be wise to invest in some other social channels, taking a few eggs out of the Facebook basket.

One month into the drastic changes, MGH – a leading voice in the social media marketing industry, which boasts the first dedicated department of its kind in the Baltimore area – surveyed results from its clients to find any effects.

Our process

• MGH pulled results from nine different brands spanning multiple industries. These profiles represent more than 2.8 million Page Likes. Of those results, MGH compared findings from the following timeframes:
  • Post-change: Jan. 12, 2018 - Feb. 12, 2018
  • Pre-change (MoM): Dec. 11, 2017 - Jan. 11, 2018
  • Pre-change (YoY): Jan. 12, 2017 - Feb. 12, 2017

• Key figures for reference were post reach, organic post reach, following (at the time), post reach rate, organic reach rate, post engagements and post engagement rate.

What we found

• On average, MGH brands saw a 5.48% average post organic reach rate from Jan. 12, 2018 to Feb. 12, 2018. This figure is defined as total followers ("Likes") divided by average organic reach.
• For the same month in 2017, MGH brands averaged an organic reach rate of 9.26%. This represents a 40.8% drop year-over-year.
• One month prior to the change, MGH clients were averaging a 6.13% organic reach rate. This represents a 10.6% decrease month-over-month.

What does this mean?
When MGH wrote about this topic in January, we told marketers not to panic just yet. There would still be a place for everyone in the News Feed, it just happens to be hidden a bit more in-between your Facebook Friends’ content.

Unfortunately, thinking of Facebook as a “secret sauce” marketing tool is just not possible anymore. MGH Senior Vice President and Social Media Marketing Director, Ryan Goff, breaks it down this way: “It's more important than ever to have a strong content strategy, focused on what's going to resonate most with your audience in terms of engagement.”

So what does that mean? Not only is putting an emphasis on producing the best content for your brand an even higher priority, recognizing that Facebook should be treated as its own ad network is just as important.

Final word
If you haven’t figured it out by now, the days of viewing social media as “free” are long over. In 2018 and beyond, social is just another advertising vehicle – albeit, one that still offers a lower cost, highly measurable way to drive business results. Still, you should view it as another channel in your marketing mix.

Simply put, the old adage, “You've got to spend money to make money” applies to Facebook marketing now.