July 1, 2025
When should I post on the business page? How often? How many a week? How different should the assets be? It’s time for a reality check on what organic B2B social is delivering organically for you and your followers. Is it worth the time and effort you’re putting in?
Another harsh reality check
Social is pay to play – you can look at your follower counts and views all you like, but the algorithms across all platforms are putting the squeeze on users and organic content. Reach suppression is alive and kicking – even for those top influencers on LinkedIn, every user is scratching their heads as to why their reach is good one day but not the next – why their engagements are through the roof today, when last week’s content got very little.
Business pages are feeling heftier squeezes on Meta and LinkedIn than ever before.
It’s not time to knock the quality of content – frankly that’s a separate conversation – but the stressful thing for agencies and in-house marketers is the time being spent to create this content in the first place…only for its visibility to be crushed and the awareness impact almost negligible.
We’re not going into AI on this – because even if you use AI – you’ve got the same problem. Content produced in bulk that gets little visibility.
We recently did a presentation to one of our clients about their organic content performance – they had a post go out to 88,000 UK users; it was seen by 1,000 people and 50% of the viewers were their own staff…very few of which engaged with the content.
Two things here; your content is no longer working hard enough for you organically, and if your own staff aren’t going to help boost the awareness and engagement on content, then you’re really pushing water uphill.
But I don’t have the budget for paid
There’s no getting round that this is a problem in the longer term for marketers. As platforms like Meta and LinkedIn crush organic, more businesses turn to paid for awareness, consideration and conversion. If you’re not among them, then you’re unlikely to be seen.
It’s not an easy conversation to approach with CMOs or CFOs – depending on your management – but it’s always worth reminding them that up to 5% of your audience is going to see your organic content. And that’s if you’re lucky!
Here’s the reality:
- You cannot properly target audiences through organic
- You cannot time it perfectly – optimal posting times are, frankly, nonsense – partly because the algorithm won’t reward you for posting during optimal audience times (because everyone else will post then as well!)
What we’re seeing with LLMs is their ability to take old content from the likes of LinkedIn that has received significant engagement, as a way to validate a view it has produced for a user. But this is less likely to be from a brand, more an individual user at present. So you can’t even bank on your content getting picked up months down the line.
Paid social usage by brands is rising every year – but social media users aren’t necessarily going to grow at the same rate. So, there’s more content being created but not more time being spent to see it. This will drive up ad bidding costs as brands compete for audience space – so it’s not just about convincing CMOs and CFOs about shifting budget into paid activity, it’s convincing them to stay the course and be patient. Not easy in this day of ROI scrutinization being amplified.
Let’s be real
B2B organic content is not a strategy – you don’t have enough control of visibility. Organic is your content that is digested when your profile is visited – this is rare, even with social search going up, most of you content won’t get scrolled down to.
Strategy for organic starts with messaging and branding!
If you need some tips or ideas for organic – or want more home truths for paid media – contact us!