Thursday, April 7, 2016

Facebook + Hashtags = Lower Reach

There's experiential learning, and then there's science, numbers, and "proof." When it comes to Facebook marketing, I've learned "trusting your gut" or at least, trusting your experience with Facebook page management is about as good as "real research" gets.

For what it's worth, here's a bit of Facebook experience I've picked up in the past 6 months: 

Posts on Facebook that included hashtags got 10 to 50% of the reach as other Facebook posts without hashtags. Yes, that's half or less of the reach of posts without hashtags. 

Posts in my sorta-professional study appeared on 5 different pages, with a mix of local and national audiences, including a non-profit, 2 B2B, 2 B2C businesses. All posts included in the semi-scientific results were created in Facebook, not a third-party posting tool. 

Facebook Page Management and Confused Gurus 

Yes, I know Facebook hashtags are clickable. Yes, I know Instagram is hashtag heaven, and Facebook owns Instagram, so ... yeah. Go figure. Like I've said before, there's as much social as there is science in Social Media Science.

Or as Buffer's Kevan Lee says, the best way to know what works is to keep trying new things

Here are what some other social watchers are saying about Facebook and hashtags, and those ever-changing reported reach numbers:

Studies show Facebook posts with hashtags have lower engagement, so limit yourself to 3 hashtags: 

Don't use hashtags, or limit use to one per post:

Facebook hashtags are clickable! But they hurt your reach. 

File under #MixedMessage

I'm still a big fan of Facebook for marketing, a fan of Twitter (especially for customer service) and I suspect I'll always be a fan of experiential learning. For the record, I'm a really big fan of learning from others' experience ;) so if you have any to share, I'd love to hear from you. (Seriously. Want to post your guest blog here?)

You might also like:

No comments: