You post something to your Facebook business page and it gets like… 5 likes? From your 10,000 followers? What the actual fuck is going on! You KNOW people follow you, you KNOW they liked your page, but your posts are reaching basically nobody. It’s like you’re screaming into the void.
This is absolutely infuriating…
And the worst part? This is BY DESIGN. Facebook intentionally throttles your organic reach to push you into paying for ads. You built up 10,000 followers and now Facebook’s like “cool, wanna reach them? Pay us.”
Facebook’s Algorithm Killed Organic Reach
Real talk – organic reach on Facebook is basically dead. Back in 2012, if you posted something it reached about 16% of your followers. Compared to this year? It’s down to like 1-2% on average. Some pages see as low as 0.5%. That means if you have 10,000 followers, maybe 50-200 people actually see your posts.
Let that sink in…
You spent years building an audience and Facebook just decided “nah, we’re not gonna show your content to them unless you pay.” It’s a complete bait and switch. They got you to invest time and effort building a following, then they pulled the rug out from under you.
Why Facebook Did This to Us
Facebook’s official excuse is “there’s too much content competing for News Feed space” and they’re “prioritizing meaningful interactions between friends and family.” Translation: They want businesses to pay for ads because that’s how Facebook makes money.
I’m not gonna lie, it’s brilliant from a business perspective. Get brands hooked on building audiences for free, then force them to pay to reach those same audiences they already built. But from a business owner’s perspective? It’s absolute bullshit!
What Actually Affects Your Reach
Facebook’s algorithm looks at a bunch of factors to decide if your post gets shown to anyone. And most of them are designed to make organic reach nearly impossible:
- Engagement rate – if people don’t interact with your posts immediately, Facebook shows them to even fewer people
- Post type – videos (especially Reels) get slightly better reach than photos or text
- Timing – posting when your audience is actually online helps, but not much
- External links – posts with links to outside websites get penalized hard
- Past performance – if your last few posts flopped, your next ones reach even fewer people
It’s a vicious cycle. Low reach means low engagement, which means even lower reach next time. And there’s basically no way to break out of it organically anymore.
They Want You to Pay for Ads
Facebook keeps pushing “Boost Post” buttons and ad suggestions because that’s the whole point. They throttled organic reach specifically to force businesses into their advertising platform. And you know what? It works. Global social media ad spending is projected to hit $276 billion in present year because businesses have no choice.
Can’t reach your OWN followers without paying? That’s the Facebook business model now. It’s absolutely insane!
Things That Might Help (But Probably Won’t)
Post video content, especially Reels. Facebook’s algorithm favors video right now because they’re competing with TikTok and YouTube. So videos get slightly better reach than photos or text posts. But we’re talking maybe 3-4% reach instead of 1-2%. Still garbage, just slightly less garbage.
Ask people to engage. Literally tell people to like, comment, and share. Yeah it sounds desperate because it IS desperate. But posts with higher engagement in the first hour get shown to more people. So if you can get your most loyal followers to jump on posts immediately, it helps marginally.
Post when your audience is online. Check your Facebook Insights to see when your followers are most active. Post during those times so you have a better chance of immediate engagement. But honestly? Even perfect timing only helps a little bit when reach is this throttled.
Join or Create Facebook Groups
Here’s something that actually works better – Facebook Groups still have decent organic reach compared to pages. Groups can reach 20-30% of members instead of the 1-2% that pages get. So if you can build a community in a group format instead of just a page, you’ll reach way more people.
The catch? Groups require way more moderation and management than pages. You can’t just broadcast content – you gotta actually engage in conversations, moderate posts, deal with spam. It’s more work but at least people actually SEE what you post.
Stop Using External Links
Facebook HATES when you link to external websites. They want to keep people on Facebook, not send them away. So posts with links to your website, blog, YouTube channel, whatever – those get penalized massively in the algorithm.
If you need to share a link, put it in the first comment instead of the main post. Or just don’t use links at all and keep everything native to Facebook. Yeah it sucks for actually driving traffic to your website, but that’s how Facebook designed it. Keep people trapped on their platform!
Some people are dealing with even worse issues like not being able to create pages in the first place. At least if you can’t create a page, you’re not wasting time building an audience that Facebook won’t let you reach.
User-Generated Content Performs Better
Content from actual users tends to get better reach than branded content. So if you can get your customers or followers to post about you and then share THEIR posts, those perform better than stuff you create yourself.
Run contests asking people to post photos with your product. Encourage reviews and testimonials that you can share. Repost user content (with permission obviously). Anything that comes FROM users instead of from you directly gets slightly better treatment from the algorithm.
The Harsh Truth About Organic Reach
You know what really pisses me off about this? Small businesses got sold on “build your social media presence, it’s free marketing!” for years. People invested thousands of hours building followers on Facebook. And then Facebook just… turned off the tap.
Now they’re like “oh you want to reach the audience YOU built? That’ll be $50 per post.” It’s extortion basically. You’re being held hostage by your own follower count.
And there’s nothing you can do about it!
You can’t take your followers with you to another platform. You can’t export them. They’re stuck on Facebook and Facebook controls whether they see your content. You built a community on rented land and now the landlord is charging you to access your own community.
Should You Even Bother With Facebook Anymore?
Honestly? For most small businesses, probably not. The return on investment for organic Facebook posting is basically zero at this point. You’re better off focusing on platforms where organic reach still exists – like TikTok, LinkedIn (for B2B), or email marketing where you actually own your audience.
But if you’ve already got a huge Facebook following, you’re kind of stuck. You can’t just abandon 50,000 followers even if only 500 of them see each post. So you either pay for ads to reach them, or you keep posting organically and accept that it’s mostly pointless.
And if your page isn’t even showing up in search on top of having no reach, then yeah, Facebook is basically useless for you at this point.
What Actually Works Now
The brutal reality is that organic Facebook reach is dead and it’s not coming back. Facebook has no incentive to give you free reach when they can charge you for it. So your options are:
Pay for ads. Accept that Facebook is now a pay-to-play platform and budget for advertising if you want to reach people.
Move to Facebook Groups. Build a community in group format where reach is still decent, accept the extra work that comes with moderation.
Diversify platforms. Stop putting all your eggs in Facebook’s basket. Build audiences on multiple platforms so you’re not dependent on Facebook’s whims.
Focus on email. Build an email list where YOU control access to your audience, not Facebook. Email reach is still 100% if you do it right.
Most smart businesses are doing a combination of all four. They pay for some Facebook ads, they have a group, they’re on other platforms, and they’re building email lists. Because relying on Facebook organic reach today? That’s just setting yourself up for frustration.
If this explained why your Facebook page engagement disappeared and what you can actually do about it, share it with other business owners getting screwed by the algorithm!