Articles: Facebook’s Explore Feed & Its Worrying Effect on Organic Reach

You’ve probably heard that Facebook are testing a new ‘Explore’ feed, which they are positioning as a way to “surface recommended content it thinks you might find interesting, including posts, articles, photos and videos from sources you haven’t followed yet – like Facebook Pages and other posts from publishers or news organizations.”

But Facebook are also testing something radically different in six countries in Eastern Europe and Asia – a different ‘Explore’ feed that moves all content that isn’t from a user’s friends or paid advertisers, out of the main feed. So Facebook Pages that don’t pay for ads (such as the vast majority of non-profits!) won’t be seen.

Slovak journalist and digital media specialist Filip Struhárik has been measuring the impact of this test, and has written a series of really interesting articles about the impact that its had on their organic Facebook reach (spoiler: it’s bad).

The articles are well worth reading, because this change could be rolled out worldwide and affect non-profits using Facebook here. It’s also yet another timely reminder of the dangers of relying on Facebook too much in your digital strategy. It’s a profit making machine, and if you’re not using it in a targeted and measurable way, it’ll swallow up your time and resources.

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