How to beat the decline of the Facebook Organic Reach

2. Beating the decline of
the Facebook Reach
Singapore, August 2014
@ThomasJestin
KRDS Co-founder

3. Why is the Facebook Reach
declining ?

4. Facebook is no evil : it’s not depriving brands from reach on purpose but is a victim of
its own sucess

5. « Every day people see content
from millions of Pages on
Facebook in their News Feeds.
Our goal is to show the right
content to the right people at the
right time so they don’t miss the
stories that are important to them
»

6. 1500 stories on average are eligible to be featured in users’ News Feed everyday, for
300 spots, so Facebook has to make a choice !

7. What was Edge Rank ?
EdgeRank is dead : Facebook’s News Feed algorithm now has
close to 100k weight factors to decide what to feature in
people’s News Feed

8. How to beat the Facebook
declining organic reach ?

9. Acquire QUALITY fans

10. Acquire quality fans using ads
 Buy Facebook Ads and target people who’ve
already interacted with your brand, they’ll be
more open to liking your brand, cheaper to
acquire and more reactive to your posts. Use :
 Custom Audiences (email data base,
phone number data base)
 Web Custom Audiences (people
who’ve visited your website)

11. Acquire quality fans using apps
 This predictions app was first
developed by KRDS in 2009 for
French TV channel Canal+ to cover
the French Football Premier
League and is still up and running
to this day with 100.000+
users/month.
 The app helped propel the page of
Canal+’s football TV show « Canal
Football Club » , 100k+ fans were
acquired on the app.
 On an app, there’s more real estate to explain why people should follow your
brand (though you can’t gate content only to those who’ve liked your page)

12. Acquire quality fans using your owned media
 Offline
 Packaging
 Shop window
 Any print material
 Online
 Website
 EDM

13. Be straightforward : say WHAT users should do…
E.g. « Become a fan by clicking here, and be the first to know about our limited offers »
Online : say « click on Like » and display
the Facebook Like Box
Offline : say « Like XXX » and display
the url and QR code
…and WHY

14. The 5 main benefits of having fans beyond organic distribution
 1. Lower cost for paid distribution thanks to:
 Ads with social context : For any person using Facebook, brands will pay less to deliver an ad with social context to that
person than an ad without social context because FB algorithm favors ads with social context as people are more receptive
to them, click more on them.
 and Look Alike audiences : Targeting users who are similar to your fans is favored by Facebook algorithm
 2. More impactful ads: The more fans, the more people can be reached with social context, with better results than ads without
social context on :
 ad recall 50% up (Nielsen study)
 online sales 35% up (Datalogix study)
 3. Optimization of creative : Your brand can conduct creative testing with fans to generate real-time feedback on content before
investing in paid media
 4. Audience insights : Fan insights (e.g., geographic, demographic, likes/interests) can enhance your decision making on and
off Facebook by informing targeting for ad campaigns and providing insights into the affinities of your customers that can influence
creative or product innovation.
 5. Fans can be reached with ads 4 times per day in their newsfeed, as opposed to 2 times/day for regular users, so the
more fans, the more impact you can have on your target audience in little time

15. What is the ideal number of fans ?
 The ideal maximum number of fans is when all of
your target audience is following your page
 The ideal minimum number of fans is when
anyone within your target audience has at least a
friend that is fan of your brand so that you can
reach 100% of your target audience with ads
having a social context.

16. Create News Feed-friendly content

17. Use bold imagery and
video to grab attention
Organic reach rate
of this post : 10%
(KRDS currently
manages Converse
Singapore FB page)

18. Use bold imagery and
video to grab attention

19. Use simple,
short copy

20. Be authentic

21. Highjack the news when relevant

22. (KRDS currently manages
Converse Singapore FB page)

24. (KRDS currently manages Magnum and Cornetto French FB page)

25. Create Timeline contests

26.  Marie, French food brand (fresh ready-made meals),
reached the 100k-fan milestone
 They posted :
 « Wow, 100k fans : Thanks to you all ! To celebrate
this milestone, Marie is giving away gifts ! To get
yours :
1. Send us a comment with #1000thanksMARIE
2. Send us your details in PM
First 1000 to contact us will a get a surprise!
Ready? Now it’s up to you ! »
 Results on that post (No media buy)
 30k people reached in 24h
 30% reach rate
 2000+ comments and 2000+ PM in 1 hour
 5% engagement rate

27.  Results on that post
 54% organic reach rate
 10% engagement rate*
*Eng. Rate =
% Shares+likes+comments
Fans

28. We’ve conducted a study to compare if regular posts and timeline contests

29. Average
engagement
rate
8x
bigger with
timeline
contests
(Eng. Rate =% shares+likes+comments )
Fans

30. KRDS has built PromoFactory, a proprietary tool to manage timeline contests for large pages
and prevent people from cheating

31. Cocreate with fans a series of illustrated
posts telling a story

32. Fans were asked to help Ludo the elf investigate and find Santa’s disappeared Danette
desserts over the month of December

33. 10k+ fans posted comments on the page

34. 500 000 fans were reached in a month, 4x more than in the previous month

35. Month over month
performance :
2,3x average reach/post
1,8x interactions

36. Create Comic Strips !

37. The comic strip format is a very
engaging one compared to
picture, text or video
 Brand’s posts featuring text, picture or
video barely go beyond an organic
engagement rate of 1%
 We’ve noticed that stories featuring
comic strips get a 2% organic
engagement rate in average with peaks
at 5%
 KRDS launched CommitStrip.com, a
daily strip for a niche audience
(webdevelopers) that went viral thanks
to Facebook sharing. It grew from 0 to
200k UV/month in 18 months without
media buy.

38. One story from CommitStrip.com got
featured on 9GAG Facebook page
and got an engagement rate 6x bigger
than the average rate/post of the 2
previous months

39. Repeat your messages

40. Repeat your messages
 If a FB post has an low fan reach (i.e. 2.5%), 70% of those reached by the following post will not have been reached by
the first post. *
 For the 6th post, it’s still 50% of the post’s audience that hasn’t seen any of the 5 previous posts. *
 DON’T post exactly the same message twice though
 This is a good way to A/B test messages before boosting them with ads :
 Upworthy has learned that a good headline can be the difference between 1,000 or 1,000,000 people reading or
viewing a story
(*Wisemetrics research)

41. Optimize timing

42. Optimize your timing
 It takes a mere 30 minutes for a post to get 50% of its
global Reach.*
 75% of engagement occurs within the first 5 hours*
 On average, you could generate 30% more reach on
Facebook using optimal timing *
(*Wisemetrics research)

43. Pages’s optimal day
« when your fans are online »
Posting on Facebook during your highest peak of ‘when your fans are online’ is generally not
a good idea
 During peak of “when your fans are online”, most likely your fans’s friends will be online too, posting content competing
with yours. Also, as your fans are following other pages, these pages will know they’re online and will be tempted to post
as well during these peaks, that’s why it’s not necessarily the best time to post stories.

45. Consider paying to boost the best posts

46. Consider paying to boost your best posts
 Leverage your fan base to actually find out which posts are performing the best organically
 Then boost those posts to get even more earned media on top of paid media

47. THANK YOU
& PLEASE FOLLOW US :
@KRDSSingapore

48. About KRDS

49. KRDS was founded in
Paris, in 2008. The
1st Facebook Agency
in Europe.
KRDS is
a 100%
social
media
agency
KRDS can
develop native
apps and
browser-based
mobile sites

50. KRDS is one of the
7 winning agencies
out of 260, the
only non-American
one

51. Singapore:
Asian
Headquarters
France: Headquarters
(2 offices)
India
(4 offices)
Shanghai
+150 people

52. SOCIAL ADS
• Design, Creation and Optimization of Ads Campaign
• ROI Oriented : Close profitability monitoring of CPA
(Actions = fans, clicks, purchases, installs)
COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT
• Set up/optimization of the page
• Fan/follower recruitment
• Training
• Strategic content
• Operational day-to-day support
SOCIAL CONNECTED
MICROSITES
• Consultancy Services
• Website socialization and gamification
SOCIAL AND MOBILE
APPS
• Concept creation / innovation driven ideas
• Technical development and graphic
creation
• Terms of Service in-depth expertise
• Hosting
• Hack-proof apps
• Mobile-enabled apps

53. Some of KRDS International Clients

54. KRDS Clients in Asia