Near the end of his town hall Q&A Thursday, a small business owner asked Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg the question that marketers keep asking:
“Given the decline in organic reach, how should businesses like ours or any business think about the role of Pages?”
Zuckerberg gave the answer that Facebook keeps giving, saying that it continually adjusts the News Feed algorithm to make sure people see the posts they are interested in seeing and that because some people prefer not to see commercial messages, business Pages aren’t reaching as many people as they once were.
But despite that, Zuckerberg said, there’s no better way to reach customers.
“Regardless of the changes that we’ve made, Facebook actually is still the best way to distribute stuff to all of the people that you are trying reach and all your customers,” he said. “Probably all your customers, or most of them, are on Facebook and you probably have more connections on Facebook than any other tool, so I actually think that even if the amount declined a little bit as we are trying to make people’s News Feeds better and more personal, Facebook remains a great way to reach people.”
Zuckerberg also suggested — as other Facebook executives have before — that businesses start thinking of their Pages as a landing page, especially for people using mobile devices.
His logic: Most of people’s activity on mobile phones is on apps, most people aren’t going to download apps from small businesses, and many business websites aren’t mobile friendly. That leaves Facebook Pages as the best option to serve people on the go.
“What we are seeing is that people’s Pages on Facebook are actually becoming a more and more important presence where customers will actually go look them up to see hours that a restaurant or store are open — to see what their friends think about it,” he said. “Typical types of things that you might have previously gone to the website to see.
“So that’s how I would think about Facebook Pages, running a business. One is that distribution is still really good even as we’re going to continue tweaking it to give everyone the best News Feed experience that we can. And two focus more on the part where people are actually directly navigating to your Page, to create the best landing experience that you can for mobile.”
Here’s the full video of Zuckerberg’s Q&A from Menlo Park (he addresses the organic reach question at the 56:30 mark):
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