In the latest of what’s become a series of stories – some featuring solid reporting, some anecdotal experience and some based solely on speculation – reports are emerging that Facebook is getting ready to cut organic reach for Pages down to somewhere around the 1% mark. And shortly after that Adweek published this story about how some publishers were seeing massive dips in traffic coming from Facebook.
I asked on Twitter the other day if, given all these changes, people would start a Facebook page for their brand if they didn’t already have one. In other words, has the value proposition shifted enough to make putting work into building a Facebook audience not worth the potential return?
Honestly it’s a question worth asking. If know the return you get from reaching 1% of of five millions fans is going to be less than the return from reaching 25% of 100,000, what’s the incentive to keep working at acquiring new Facebook fans?
If you ask me, the winds just changed and they’re no longer in Facebook’s favor. This is the kind of huge shift that makes brands (including those that provide the advertising revenue Facebook depends on) reevaluate their publishing strategy. How’s Google+ looking these days? Is there an upstart waiting in the wings? These are the kinds of things brand managers are researching right now. I know. I’m one of them.
