Decline in Brand

By Arif Ahmed

The era of free organic reach on Facebook seems to come to an end.


Facebook defines Organic reach as the number of people who saw your ad on Newsfeed and pages including people who liked it from a story shared by a friend, commented or share your post, answered a question or responded to an event.

A study was conducted by Social Ogilvy of 106 country-level brand pages and found out that the average reach of organic post has declined from 12.05 % in October to 6.15% in February. Out of 106 pages, 23 pages in the sample with more than 500,000 likes, reported a decline from 4 % in October to 2.11% in February.

The implication for this research is crystal clear. As the research has pointed out that the free organic reach on Facebook is coming to an end, marketers should now be thinking of shifting into paid channel in the marketing channel. It is pertinent to mention that a message posted on brand page will not be shown on Facebook to anyone unless it qualifies to gain a notable number of likes from a user’s friend. Until, a post is liked by a friend and clearly accepted by the community; only then the post has earned the right to be shown organically.

Moreover, Brands will now have to be more planned in their use of Facebook and think carefully before posting or creating content, when do they post and how do they promote their post through Facebook’s network.

An interesting observation is to be noted that Facebook is trying to create scarcity. There is only a restricted amount of promotional moment in a user’s timeline, and this would trigger more competition between brands to wins these spots.  It is a known fact in economics, that when there is scarcity, there is always profit.

It is also indicates that Facebook will be competing for marketing budget against other entities comprising of both online and offline. This means that Facebook will have to justify each and every paid post and make sure that it delivers the desired results. By decelerating the adoption and the organic promotions of post, Facebook is asking brands to spend more money to acquire desired results than they are just now. So now the question is that, what will happen if Facebook rises or falls as the organic reach approaches Facebook decline