Tragedy for B2B organic reach – it’s being suppressed

We all knew it was for a while – but now the suppression of organic reach has hit new levels for B2B.

Facebook business pages are pushing organic reach down and LinkedIn is giving you a time limit to make your post impactful. Yes, organic B2B content is going through something of a crisis right now. How can your business bypass this?

You will have seen in our latest snapshot that Facebook business pages are on life support – it’s trying to push more and more companies to spend, tightening the chokehold on organic reach, prioritising groups and community engagement over business pages (Vistasocial).

Let’s be cynical here – it’s a way to make you pay up and move away from organic social practice. But in our view, it makes sense. At best, organic reach gets to 1-10% of your audience – paid gets you to so much further and at a small cost as well on Meta platforms. Even hashtags, formerly believed to be the way to hook onto the big conversations, are bordering on obsolete. On Facebook they offer nothing, on Instagram? There’s still some benefit but socials are almost going SEO by the way they share results with you – keywords are important, not hashtags – so it means making the start of that post more impactful than ever before.

LinkedIn…well, it’s going a similar way but perhaps not as drastically. You’ll need to notify staff on posting schedules and engage on new posts asap, basically.

OK, so how do I get around these problems?

Scheduling posts and letting your staff know early doors is key. Get them engaging for the first 15-30 mins after the post is issued. And this isn’t just likes, it’s comments and reshares with their own commentary. This will help you push past the reach limits.

As a business page, it’s worth finding some time before the post goes out to engage so that the platforms see that you are ‘active’ – this also offers the chance for a stronger performing post once issued.

But…

Paid is the way. Sorry – it’s just a fact. Even a well engaged page needs paid support to cut through the noise. If you’re relying on organic reach alone, you’re fighting a losing battle. The best strategy? Pair paid with community engagement on Facebook.

On LinkedIn, it does cost more – but your targeting is much more accurate. You have to pay for that, of course, but don’t forget that CEO or Sales Director is on Meta too….they’re not easy to find, but they are there and spending more time there than on LinkedIn. With more dwell time, you’re more likely to reach them!

“But Meta is for personal use and LinkedIn is for workers?”

Stop right there! Sorry, but that’s just too simplistic a view – every time you’re marketing to your audience, you’re marketing to humans not job titles. Make it count on as many platforms as you can!

Need more organic tips or looking to commence on paid and don’t know where to start? Contact us today.

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