There has been a lot of hoopla over the last few days about the apparent death of organic reach on social media for businesses. The idea that has been floating around is that posts that appear to be ads are no longer going to get much exposure without ad dollars behind them. This is hitting the automotive industry like it’s something new, but in reality, it has been that way for some time.
Facebook hasn’t killed organic reach. They’re cracking down on posts that seem to be advertisements without the appropriate budgets behind them. This isn’t targeting small- to medium-sized businesses like car dealers. It’s targeting big companies, those who have hundreds of thousands or millions of Facebook fans. For those of us who work with local businesses such as car dealers, nothing is going to change. Nobody had the true fan base to have a noticeable organic reach in the first place.
To be successful on Facebook, dealers must have a diverse and strategically sound advertising and content plan in place. Not to be self-serving, but my company has been doing it for some time now and realized long ago, well before the latest announcements and blog posts, that organic reach for car dealers was no longer a viable strategy. That doesn’t mean that everyone needs to start boosting posts or throwing up ads to make up for the lack of organic reach. It takes experience and testing to get the types of results that can actually drive car sales.
The “big announcement” was just another attempt to get businesses to realize they can’t be successful on social media without paying up. Thankfully, it’s just not that much money to find success, especially when viewed relative to other forms of digital advertising that isn’t nearly as targeted.