According to an a recent article on EdgeRankChecker.com the reach of a post on Facebook (ie the number of people who actually get to see a post) has halved over the last 6 months. To some extent this can be related to what appears to be a 50% increase in the average number of pages liked by the average Facebook user over the last year techcrunch. What this means is that the average user now likes so many people/pages that they simply don’t have the time  to keep read every post that could (in theory) appear on their timeline.

Of course this isn’t the only factor, the big problem for most businesses is that rather than building the tools to help users manage their own timeline Facebook has decided to impose a news feed sorting algorithm that according to Facebook’s News Feed Director of Product Management Will Cathcart has over 10,000 factors. The most important of those 10,000 are: 

• How popular (Liked, commented on, shared, clicked) are the post creator’s past posts with everyone
• How popular is this post with everyone who has already seen it
• How popular have the post creator’s past posts been with the viewer
• Does the type of post (status update, photo, video, link) match what types have been popular with the viewer in the past
• How recently was the post published

The consensus of comments I’ve seen on the web is that this drop in organic views is going to primarily affect small business (including Hague Publishing). Although one piece of good news is that artists, musicians, entertainers, and movies are not as badly affected.

Now I might actually be a little strange but I’m not too worried about having to pay to put my posts in front of people who have actually asked to be kept informed of what’s happening at Hague Publishing (say $5 a post). What does piss me off is having to pay a minimum of $30 to put a post in front of the people who couldn’t care a stuff about the latest and greatest e-book, no matter how great it actually it. Because that’s what Facebook requires, that your ‘boosted post’ goes before those following your page AND THEIR FRIENDS.

So what am I going to do about this. Two things actually: firstly it appears a definite mugs game to advertise for a additional likes so I won’t. Secondly while I continue to post I’ll also continue to spend more time building up a following on twitter and google+. Twitter, interestingly, is showing continuous organic growth compared to our Facebook page which is almost static.

In the meantime, if you follow us on Facebook and want to ensure you at lease receive notifications of all our posts, here’s the instructions: