If you have read my previous post about the latest news from Facebook about the decreased organic reach of page posts, you know I have a pretty strong feeling about this topic. It’s been hotly debated on multiple platforms for a while now.

The question being is Facebook still worth it for marketers? And what about users, what experience are they really getting?

Recently, Jon Loomer wrote a post about an experiment he ran. If you haven’t read his post, I recommend you scroll through it. He did an in depth analysis of all the posts in his news feed over a 24 hour period. He then dissected the types of content and compared the overall ratio of various types of posts (including posts from friends, organic page posts, and ads).

With my educational background in the scientific field, I’m always up for a good scientific experiment. If you didn’t know, I have a Bachelor’s degree in Biology and a Masters in Forensic Science. I know…. I write a blog about social media marketing – this life course deviation is for another blog topic or conversation another day.

So back to Jon Loomer’s post. I was really interested in his results. Essentially, he determined that in 24 hours he saw 374 posts. Of those, 239 (64.1%) posts came from friends, 106 (28.4%) were organic page posts, and 25 (6.7%) of the posts were ads.

I was intrigued by his results but felt that it needed more insight. For example, how many brand pages does he follow? He has a graph with 38 brand pages listed. But are those all the pages he likes? And within those pages, how many posts did each of them make during the period of his experiment? And how many friends does he have? How does that affect how many friend posts he sees versus the number of page posts he sees?

He also mentions what he refers to as “light-weight” stories. These are those frivolous posts that inform you so-and-so like someone’s picture or things like that. Yet he doesn’t reference how many times these showed up in his feed. I wanted to know how many of his 64.1% friend posts were “high quality” posts versus “light-weight” stories.

And then there’s the latest issue associated with story bumping. These are those stories that get pushed back up into your news feed because Facebook thinks they are of value to you. I’m totally ok with this concept. Except lately it seems like Facebook is resharing the SAME select posts over and over and over again. You know you’ve complained about this just as much as I have.

I decided to run my own experiment. Partially for the pure interest I had in seeing what really is in my feed every day. Partially to dig further into the questions that Jon’s post left me with. And, partially to support my hypothesis that brand page posts are harder to see.

So, I spent more time on Facebook than I probably ever have! I literally tracked every single post for 24 hours.

I used the following criteria:

• Friends posts = people with whom I am directly connected (not following or who are listed as a business page)
• Organic Brand posts = business page posts that appear in my feed unsupported as an ad or promoted post
• Ads = any post that appears in the feed as a sponsored/promoted post (whether I already like the page or not)
• Light-weight stories = any post that indicates someone liked another post or commented on an unrelated page or post
• Duplicated posts = any post that reappeared in my feed at least one additional time and which I had NOT commented on nor liked
• I had 250 Friends at the time of the experiment (I neither added nor removed any friends)
• I was following 875 Pages at the time of the experiment (I neither liked nor unliked any pages) – yes, I have a “slightly” higher than average number of page likes 

As you can see by my proportion of friends to pages, I would expect to see a LOT more page posts than I would friend posts. I obviously like companies a lot more than I like people… just kidding! But I am very selective about who I add as friends on my personal Facebook page.

I should also note that I do participate in a lot of Fan Page Parties on Facebook which accounts for the high number of pages I like. However, I only follow pages which are of actual interest to me – I do not automatically follow all other pages. Therefore, of those 875 pages I follow, chances are I actually want to see the majority of their content.

So what happened in 24 hours on Facebook? Here you go!

I saw 486 total posts – this is considerably higher than the average user’s 300 posts per day.

Of those 486 posts, 16.67% of those posts were from friends, 76.34% of those posts were from organic brand posts, and 7.0% of those posts were from ads.

I will be the first one to admit that I was surprised to see so many posts from brands in my feed. I knew I saw a lot, but it was interesting to see the actual breakdown. I will give Facebook credit (as a user and as a marketer) that I’m happy with this proportion of posts given the ratio of my friends and page likes.

One thing that I noticed, which is not represented in the data, is the distribution of ads/sponsored posts. In the overnight and early morning hours, there were very few ads in my feed. However, during peak times, I was averaging an ad every 8 posts. So, while the total distribution of ads was only 7% of my posts, during the peak hours, I was heavily inundated with them. This is likely why so many of us are complaining about an increase in ad exposure. For better or worse, perception is reality. And if we only check Facebook a few hours a day, heavy ad presence will deter users. However, as page managers using ads, it is beneficial to know that your sponsored posts are getting the highest exposure at the most opportune times.

I still wanted to dig deeper. How many high-quality posts was I seeing versus low quality (duplicated or light-weight) posts? Upon analysis, only 5.56% of the posts were actually duplicated within my feed (I was actually a little surprised that this wasn’t higher) and 6.79% of the posts were what I considered light-weight stories.

So, while this looks like a good distribution of high-quality posts, it’s worth noting that the light-weight stories I counted were only posts from friends. So if I only saw 81 posts from friends and yet saw 33 light-weight stories, that means that 40.7% of the friend posts were light-weight stories! That’s a lot!

It could be that Facebook is trying to increase the reach of other users and posts so they are sharing these types of posts hoping that it will get me to comment on or like the posts as well. It could also be because my friends aren’t “high quality” themselves – choosing to like and comment on others’ posts rather than update their own statuses regularly.

Finally, I also tracked how many page posts I saw from each brand page in my feed over those 24 hours. I saw posts from a total of 192 pages – that’s 21.9% of the pages I follow that showed up in my feed. Of those page posts, here is the distribution of the frequency of those posts. Please note that I could not possibly list all 192 pages in one graphic. I listed all those pages for which I saw at least two posts and randomly selected a number of other pages for which I only saw one post.

I also included how many posts those pages actually posted within that same 24 hour period. This way I could see how many of their posts I was actually seeing. (As a discretionary comment, the Deal Wise Mommy site actually posted 84 posts in 24 hours but I cut the number to make the chart more legible.)

Please click on the image to open in up in a larger viewer in your browser. The blue lines designate the number of posts I saw from that page in the 24 hour period. The red lines designate the number of posts that page shared in the 24 hour period.

Of the 192 pages’ posts I saw in my feed, I saw multiple posts from 79 of those pages.

Upon further analysis of the 192 pages, I was pleasantly surprised to see that for many of them, I saw the majority or all of the posts they made within the 24 hour period. In fact, there were even a few pages for which I saw more posts than what they actually shared during the 24 hour period. This can be attributed to the story bumping which is sharing older stories with me. However, story bumping may also slightly skew the results above for how many page posts I viewed compared with those actually posted within the 24 hour period. For example, just because I saw 2 posts and the page posted 2 posts, doesn’t mean I saw those same two posts.

Most of these pages are pages with which I interact regularly. Some pages are pages I have followed for months (or even years) and others are pages that I have just recently liked (within the last few weeks).

It’s also worth noting that I am probably more “active” than the average Facebook user when it comes to page engagement. I “like” a lot of posts and comment frequently on other pages. Therefore, Facebook is recognizing more pages that produce content they believe I want to see.

But I still only saw posts from 21.9% of the pages I like. That means that almost 80% of the pages I’ve chosen to follow did not appear in my feed.

Unfortunately, I did not have the time to analyze the posts for the 683 pages I did not see to determine how many posts those pages made during the same time. Of course, it can be argued that some of them did not post at all during this period, but it’s highly unlikely that all 683 were dormant.

Based on the data above, the pages for which I saw the most posts, also usually had the highest number of posts on their pages.

Again, I have to admit that I’m not an “average” Facebook user. I have a very disproportionate distribution of friends and pages. And as I like more pages, the potential reach of each page post is further reduced. This is the same phenomenon occurring on Facebook in general – the more people on the site, the more pages actively posting, the more pages using ads, and the more content available, the harder it is for each of us to see that content. The platform is highly saturated.

One final discretionary note on this experiment: this was only one 24 hour period in the middle of the week. The data above is far from definitive. If I had more time in my days, I would have conducted this study over at least 7 consecutive days to fully analyze the patterns and post behaviors across various weekdays and weekends. The data in my study may be skewed high or low depending on ad placement, post scheduling, and page activity on the single period I chose to analyze.

Takeaways

Facebook still works. I know I’ve been cranky and complaining. And I’m still cranky and I will continue to complain as my post reach dips lower and lower on every page I manage. But if you want Facebook to work, it can.

But with that statement comes some key caveats.

You really need to work at Facebook. Long gone are the days where you can share one post a day and have it reach a lot of people.

If you want to boost your reach, you need to share multiple posts every single day. I’m talking during peak hours, off peak hours, and at all other intervals that fall somewhere in the middle of the peaks.

You also need to craft a lot of variety into your posts. Facebook recently said that posts with links would start seeing higher reach. I have yet to see this happen and I know a lot of others are still waiting too. So you need to do images, text only, links without previews, links with previews, and even mix in some videos. The more variety you have, the more dynamic your page will be.

You need to get your fans wholeheartedly on board. The more they engage on your page, the more of your posts they will see. You can invite them to set your page for notifications so that they see more of your posts, but a lot of “everyday” fans aren’t going to take this step. So you need to create the BEST content you can. This means asking them the right questions, sharing the content they really want to see and read, using really high quality descriptions for your links, and being prepared to respond and engage with every comment you receive.

You can also invest in sponsored or boosted posts to increase your reach. For relatively low budgets, you can reach thousands more people – either your existing fans (cheapest option) or potential new fans.

Obviously, this is not an easy feat. This takes time, energy, research, money, and expertise.

You have a few options if you want to continue to use Facebook for marketing successfully. You could use any combination of these options to maximize your Facebook marketing.

• Make (a lot) more time in your day to manage Facebook
• Hire a social media manager to manage your account
• Hire a social media consultant to help you optimize your social media strategy
• Look into and invest in sponsored posts

Of course, there will be many people who no longer want to make these types of commitments to Facebook. This is not something to be ashamed of. I have publicly admitted that I will be reducing the time I spend on Facebook. And with the exception of this experiment, I have been spending more time on Google+ and bringing a lot of my regular Facebook features to this platform. I am sincerely enjoying my time there and the engagement I receive there.

If you are interested in directing your time and audience to another platform, I invite you to read this previous post with tips and advice on how to manage this transition.