Facebook Shows Fewer Page Posts Again

What Facebook said last week

Last Wednesday Facebook announced another change to News Feed: posts from friends and family will be shown higher, ahead of posts from pages.

The company said plainly that reach, and the visits to websites that come from it, may fall for some pages.

It added that the effect will vary. Pages whose posts spread because people share them and friends comment on them should notice less than pages whose reach depends on their own posts being shown directly.

Many small business pages fall into the second group.

Who will feel it most

• Pages that announce closures or changed hours only on Facebook.
• Event organisers relying on page posts to fill seats.
• Non-profits whose members and volunteers follow the page.
• Restaurants posting daily specials for regulars.
• Shops posting new stock to people who liked the page years ago.

The first costs the most when it fails. A post saying you are closed on Monday for repairs, seen by a fraction of the people who needed it, sends the rest to a locked door.

A like was never a subscription

Many owners treat page likes as a mailing list. They are closer to a box of business cards: people who once showed interest, some of whom will see any given post.

Facebook decides who sees each post, and those decisions change without notice. The business holds no list of its followers and has no way to contact them outside Facebook.

That does not make the page useless. It makes it the wrong place to keep anything essential.

What still reaches people

Posts that people respond to travel further, because comments and shares carry them into friends' feeds, which is exactly the activity this change rewards.

Photographs of real work, real people and real moments in the business tend to draw responses. Announcements written like notices on a bulletin board tend not to.

Events created as Facebook Events, rather than mentioned in a post, notify the people who said they were interested or going as the date approaches.

And messages sent to the page still arrive directly, so answering them promptly matters more than posting more often.

Paying for the posts that matter

Boosting a post, paying Facebook to show it to more people, remains the most dependable way to reach people there at a particular moment.

That does not mean boosting everything. Choose the few posts each month that carry real business, such as a registration date, an event or a seasonal opening.

Aim them at people near the business rather than at everyone who might conceivably be interested. A modest budget on a tight radius keeps the money on people who could actually come.

Afterwards, check what each boost actually delivered: the clicks through to your site, not just the number of people reached.

A worked example

A neighbourhood house runs drop-in programs, family activities, seniors' lunches and summer day camps, and for several years its Facebook page has been its main way of telling people what is on.

This spring the registration date for summer camps went out as a page post. Families who had come every year missed it, because the post reached only some of the people who followed the page.

The camps filled with those who happened to see it, and staff spent the following fortnight explaining to disappointed parents that the date had been announced.

The house now puts every program and date on its website first, on a single page kept current, and posts on Facebook with a link to that page.

It started an email list, with sign-up at the front desk and on the website, and sends one short message a month plus a note the week registration opens.

Registration posts are now boosted to families within a few kilometres, a week before each date.

The website is the part you control

A post slides down the feed within a day. A page on your own site stays where you put it, says exactly what you wrote, and can be found by search, by a link or by someone typing the address.

Put hours, closures, events, menus and registration dates on the website first, then share them on Facebook with a link back.

The Facebook post then has a simpler job: getting people to the full details, which live somewhere you own. The page also reaches customers who are not on Facebook at all.

An email list you own

Email still meets spam filters and promotions tabs, but no algorithm picks a small share of your list to receive each message.

Ask for addresses at the counter, on receipts, on the website and on the Facebook page itself, and note the date and the way each person gave consent, which CASL expects you to be able to show.

Then send less often than you post: once or twice a month, with things people would genuinely be annoyed to miss.

What not to do this week

Do not triple the number of posts to make up the difference. More posts of the same kind mostly means more posts few people see.

Do not ask staff and friends to like and share everything. It looks like reach, but it is mostly the same small circle seeing it again.

And do not close the page. It still carries reviews, answers messages and appears when people look for you on Facebook.

The counter-case

Some pages will barely notice. A business whose posts customers regularly share, or whose followers comment as a habit, is in the group Facebook expects to feel this least.

A business that never relied on free reach, using its page for reviews, messages and paid ads, will see little change either.

For anyone who has treated page posts as the main way to tell customers anything, the advice holds: keep the essentials on your website and in an email list.

Moving the essentials

1. List what you announce only on Facebook.
2. Put each item on your website first.
3. Link to those pages from your posts.
4. Start an email list with recorded consent.
5. Create events as Facebook Events, not posts.
6. Boost the few posts that carry real business.
7. Post what people respond to, not notices.

Step one is the place to start, because most businesses find that something essential, usually hours or a registration date, lives nowhere except a page post.

The same shift on another network is covered in Instagram will stop showing posts in order.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.