Facebook Reach & Negative Feedback

I don’t know if some of you have noticed but reach is not as high on Facebook posts lately. When Facebook changed their algorithm not too long ago, they incorporated negative feedback into the mix. What is negative feedback you ask?

Fan hides a post (76% do this)
Fan hides all posts from a page (16% do this)
Fan reports the post as spam (8% do this)
Fan unlikes the page (<1% do this)

Why it matters: Content quality is more important than ever and images are the biggest magnets for negative feedback. This is tricky however, because they’re the key to a successful post. Either way, images attract attention, make sure they rock the socks off your fans.

When it comes to Talking About This percentages, if the reach is low and people provide negative feedback, that could drive that stat lower than the industry standard of 3%. If your page doesn’t get that high of interaction to begin with, your posts have to be super premium choice. It’d be better to skip a day of posting if your post is crummy rather than get negative feedback on a filler post.

What we recommend:

Make sure that the images are awesome, good quality, and relate to your post completely. Again, images are the main problem for attracting negative feedback
Keep the content in line with your fans’ expectations. If the post strays from the topic they’re expecting, they’ll hide the post or your page
Don’t freak out and stop posting images or only do brand messaging. Make sure you really understand your community and their needs
Expect a correlation between engagement and negative feedback. The more people engage with a post, the more people will see it, which puts you at risk for more eyeballs to provide negative feedback. Basically take this information with a grain of salt and trust your gut
Be a jerk and go hide your competitors posts. Kidding!!! (Seriously, don’t do this)

Next Steps: Go to Facebook analytics and download insights. In the “BU column” you can see Daily Negative Feedback. This is good info to study. Try to figure out which posts aren’t doing well versus the ones that are. This can be tricky since some pages do several posts per day. Perhaps the best way to do full testing is to do one post per day for a little while. Good luck and may the positive feedback be with you!