I recently wrote about the reach changes on Facebook in the blog that I created for the PR consultancy I now work for. Because it’s an important issue for businesses I decided to share the article here as well, but I’ve added a few more details.

Have you seen a drastic decline in the reach of your Facebook posts recently? Well, don’t worry, it’s not your fault, you haven’t done anything wrong – it’s Facebook that has made some changes to the network.

A while ago I noticed a decrease in the reach for page updates. At the beginning of September other page administrators also reported that something was going wrong, however Facebook hadn’t said anything – advertisers in the States called the situation the ‘Facebook mystery of Fall 2012’.

Finally on 20 September the network announced it has made changes to its EdgeRank algorithm. The EdgeRank determines what you see in your News feed; this includes the status updates of friends, their photos as well as business pages posts.

After the change of the EdgeRank, company page updates are now for some reason seen less in the News feeds of the people who like the page and so the possibility of reaching new potential fans has also decreased. Some pages have lost 40-50% of their organic reach.

According to Facebook, the reason why they adjusted the EdgeRank was to reduce spam and make sure the News feed doesn’t turn ‘lame’, meaning people are only offered content that they are most interested in.

What is PR? A difficult question isn't it? 

For years the industry has been struggling to find a single definition that would be equally recognised by national PR bodies and organisations as well as communications academics and professionals. Head over to google and type in “definition of PR” – you’ll see about 107 thousand results! Any book you open on PR you'll find a different definition.

Even the official PR associations in various countries have adopted different definitions.

If you have a look at the ones from the two biggest PR professional bodies in the world - the US PRSA and the UK CIPR - you'll see that they differ quite a lot. 

The CIPR argues that

"Public relations is about reputation - the result of what you do, what you say and what others say about you.

Public relations is the discipline which looks after reputation, with the aim of earning understanding and support and influencing opinion and behaviour. It is the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organisation and its publics."

The PRSA on the other hand has defined the practice as follows:

“Public relations is a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.”

As you can see, the CIPR’s definition has a strong focus on reputation, whereas the PRSA emphasises the importance of building relationships with publics. These two are indeed some of the most important aspects of PR, but I’m not sure if they individually  fully define the practice. They certainly aren’t mutually exclusive either.

The PRSA’s definition has an interesting story worth telling.

Platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are social instruments of two-way communication. This means, they offer businesses the opportunity to talk directly to their customers, but most importantly customers have the means to talk back to the company too, anytime, anywhere. And this is where the power of social media lies – in communication.

What some businesses get wrong is how social media can only serve as another advertising tool. The reality however is that broadcasting a message and simply selling don’t work anymore. As Brian Solis says: “People are searching for answers and directions, not messages or sales pitches.” It is ‘peer recommendations’ (the reviews and opinions about products and services by other people like us) that we seek on social media and that are absolutely critical to company’s marketing activities for one very simple reason: people trust friends and others like them, not organisations.

Research (see infographic by Hubspot below) shows that 75% of consumers do not even believe ads tell the truth, whereas 90% would turn to friends for brand recommendations and 71% are more likely to buy a product if someone referred to it on social media.

Here are some of the benefits and opportunities of actively engaging on social media that are worth considering:

As the largest social media platform, Facebook has now reached more than 1 billion users worldwide. If the network were country, it would’ve been the third largest after China and India. Imagine what a mix of personalities, interests, understandings and beliefs this massive group of interconnected people contains!

The other day I came across a presentation that shows just that – a classification of the types of people using Facebook to interact with brands. It’s a fascinating and funny categorisation created by the digital agency Soap Creative. According to them there are actually 36 different Facebook fans.

As the agency said, “Like any large ecosystem, Facebook’s billion-strong audience presents a fascinating glimpse into the sheer variety of fans that swarm to brand pages like African fauna around a watering hole. While many are relatively benign, and some are downright pleasant, there do exist various types that have the potential to drive one to drink.”

Here are some of the characters:

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google+, Tumblr, the list of social media platforms can go on and on... Social media has been so rapidly growing the last few years, becoming one of the most talked about subjects in the world of technology. It has changed the way we communicate, work and build relationships. Social media has been truly revolutionary - some call it 'the biggest shift since the Industrial Revolution.'

To show you more about the massive impact social media has had on our lives I want to share with you the updated Social Media Revolution video for 2013. This is the latest version of the very popular video series by Eric Qualman, author of Socialnomics, that show astounding facts in the social media development (here are the previous ones: 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012).

Be ready to be shocked!

Did you know that:

• Over 50% of the world's population is under 30 years old? (The majority of them use social media all the time.)
• Each day 20% of Google searches have never been searched before?
• Social media has become the #1 activity on the Web?
• 1 in 5 divorces are blamed on Facebook?
• Generation Y and Z consider e-mail passé? Some universities have even stopped distributing e-mail accounts!
• Kindergartens are learning on iPads, tablets and eReaders, not chalkboards?
• 69% of parents are "friends" with their children on social media?
• Every second 2 new members join LinkedIn (this has doubled since last year)?
• Every minute 72 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube?
• If Wikipedia were made into a book, it would be 2.25 million pages long and it would take you over 123 years to read?
• 90% of consumers trust peer recommendations; only 14% trust advertisements?
• 93% of marketers use social media for business?
• Babys in Egypt have been named Facebook and Twitter?