Skip to main content

The decline of organic reach has been talked about for near enough a decade.

If I remember correctly, it was 2013 that it became a talking point for businesses.

“Alex, I’m not reaching as many people on Facebook as I used to” was a regular opener.

And as expected in social media the conversation has shifted from Facebook to Instagram and LinkedIn.

Within 12-24 months we’ll see the same conversations about organic reach and TikTok.

The decline of Organic Reach on Social is real, but the truth about YOUR ever decreasing organic reach might have as much to do with your activity as it is the algorithm.

Let’s look at the reasons your content is seeing a decline in reach.

MORE NOISE
There needs to be a filter or an algorithm.

Social Media would be an unbearable messy noise if there wasn’t some filter inbuilt.

As long ago as 2013, Facebook Engineer Lars Backstrom stated the following

“Every time someone visits the news feed there are on average 1,500 potential stories from friends, people they follow and pages for them to see, and most people don’t have enough time to see them all”

Now imagine how many more friends you have and how many more pages you have followed in the last 8 years.

Part of the reason your posts aren’t being seen is there’s more noise. And more noise means more competition for attention. Which means your posts need to be a lot more engaging than they were in 2013.

YOU’RE TOO REPETITIVE
Look at your feed.

Have you been doing the same things for the past 18 months?

Maybe even longer if you’re honest.

People are bored of seeing the same things every single day from you.

Why do you think the best comedies of all time have a finite shelf life of 2 series and a one off special?

Because they realise that however good the ideas and format are, there’s only a limited time that people will pay attention.

Having regular idea generation sessions is a good way to refine what you’re doing on social media.

YOU’VE STOPPED POSTING CONTENT THAT WORKS
Sometimes you just have to get back on the horse.

Often when we’re delivering social media training, business owners will talk about how they’ve lost their mojo and just stopped posting on social media as often. Sometimes they’ve stopped completely.

It’s not always the case, but often there are ideas that need reviving and reformatting so they work again.

Looking at the data so you can see if there are themes and content pillars to extract from the last few years is really key.

You can probably think of 2 or 3 types of posts that have always worked for you and you gave up posting them for no reason whatsoever.

YOU’RE NO LONGER NEW AND EXCITING
Businesses have a life cycle of interest

Launch – Everyone wants to know about you because you’re new
Momentum – Word Of Mouth Works and You Pick Up More Interest
Apathy – You’ve been around for so long people are apathetic
Loss – They mourn your demise and loss

People are attracted to shiny new things.

It’s in our nature.

If your business is no longer new and shiny, you need to think of ways to generate interest on a regular basis.

We’re a service-based business, so we don’t launch new services all the time – but we have at least one WOW moments a month. 12 WOW moments a year.

Think how you can wow people and keep people coming back for more (both on social media and real life).

YOU’RE NOT ON THE NEW PLATFORM / PLATFORM WHERE THE ATTENTION IS
Marketing is essentially having the right content at the right place at the right time in front of the right audience.

Now I’m not saying you have to be on every platform because it’s available.

You 100% don’t have to be on every single social media platform.

But early adopters benefit from exposure on the platform whilst it’s growing.

I certainly benefitted from being very active on Twitter in 2009, the same with LinkedIn before everyone said you need to be on LinkedIn.

Similar I was late to Facebook for this business (even though I used it for my previous business) and I feel at a disadvantage despite having 10,000+ followers on Facebook.

SO A QUICK QUESTION FOR YOU
After reading the above, do you believe your decline in organic reach is entirely down to the platform? Or could you work a little harder?

Areas that we can help with include

– Rediscovering your mojo
– Defining Your Content Pillars
– Idea Generation
– Using Insights To Create Better Content
– Honest Feedback about whether certain platforms could work for you

NEED HELP WITH SOCIAL MEDIA TRAINING FOR YOUR BUSINESS
Chat to us about Social Media Marketing for YOUR organisation , so we can better understand YOU and what will grow your organisation

We can chat about whether online or Face 2 Face is better for you

We can only find out what is unique to your business by chatting with you

Look at our Social Media Training and Social Media Management services

We offer Social Media Training on
* LinkedIn
* Instagram
* Facebook
* Twitter
* Blogging

We can do this
* 121
* Corporate Workshops
* Group Workshops
* Face to Face or Via Zoom / Skype

Please call Alex on 07806774279 or email alex@altrinchamhq.co.uk

 

 

Alex McCann

Author Alex McCann

More posts by Alex McCann