Is Facebook driving down fan reach in favour of sponsored stories?

Facebook has been accused of making changes to the formula that determines if brands appear in the news feed of its fans pages, effectively driving them to paid advertising to improve their reach.

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According to a report in the FT, a number of brands running Facebook pages are finding their reach has dropped since the social network altered its EdgeRank algorithm last month (September 20th).
EdgeRank is the Facebook code that determines the organic (unpaid) exposure received by Facebook posts from companies.
The algorithm rewards that engagement, and it also ends up costing less for brands to promote a post that’s getting strong engagement.
At the same time, Facebook is campaigning aggressively to get companies to pay for promoted posts to increase the reach of their content.
Facebook recently came under fire for spam and bots driving up the number of ‘likes’ on a brand page. The social network said it made the EdgeRank change to encourage more quality content and improve the Facebook experience by reducing the perception of “spam” in the newsfeed — instead favoring posts that receive stronger engagement in the form of likes, comments and sharing.
Speaking to blog EdgeRank Checker, Facebook said in a statement: “We’re continuing to optimize News feed to show the posts that people are most likely to engage with, ensuring they see the most interesting stories. This aligns with our vision that all content should be as engaging as the posts you see from friends and family.”
However, the move has also lead to brands that once attracted millions of Facebook fans through its “like” button are now learning that their posts and photos are rarely seen for free, nudging them to buy its “Sponsored Stories” ads to cut through the noise.
In a recent study, two social media marketing groups, We Are Social and Socialbakers, found a “significant decline” of about 50 per cent since August in the average number of fans a brand’s Facebook post will reach.
While Facebook said in May that 16% of a brand page’s fans will typically see each post, We Are Social found the average has fallen to around 12%.
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In a blog post Social marketer Jeff Doak criticised the change for ‘destroying half the value of your brand page overnight’.
“This change is more than just a minor tweak,” he wrote. “This is Facebook doubling down and admitting that they really don’t have any interest in brands having a real relationship with the fans they’ve accumulated. This is admitting they don’t know how to create a real ad model other than making brands pay to talk to the fans they may have already paid to find and cultivate.”
Read the FT report here (subscription required)

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