Facebook Timeline for Pages and falling reach: what to change

The redesign announced on February 29 and enforced on March 30 did more than add a big photo.

• Cover photo. An 851 by 315 pixel image across the top of the Page. Facebook's guidelines ban prices, discounts, contact information, calls to action and references to Facebook features in it.
• No default landing tab. You can no longer send new visitors to a "Like us to see the offer" page. Fan-gating still works inside an app tab, but nobody lands there by default.
• App boxes under the cover. Four visible, with Photos fixed in the first slot. The other three are the most valuable real estate on the Page for email sign-ups, offers and contests.
• Pinned and highlighted posts. You can pin one post to the top for seven days and widen any post to span both columns.
• Milestones. Dated entries for the company's history, which make the Page read as a story rather than a stream.
• Private messages. Fans can message the Page directly, which means someone has to answer.
• Admin panel and Insights. New metrics, including reach per post and "People Talking About This," sit at the top of the Page for admins.

Facebook is approaching a billion users and more than half of them log in from a phone, where the Page design matters less and the feed matters more.

Facebook has acknowledged that an average Page post reaches around 16 percent of fans. That is not a bug; it is how the news feed works. EdgeRank scores every story using three factors: affinity between the fan and the Page, the weight of the story type, and how recently it was posted. If a fan has not interacted with you lately, your posts drop out of their feed.

Many Page admins noticed a further decline in reach after Promoted Posts launched in May and June. Whatever the cause, the practical rule is the same: you cannot rely on a free, organic post being seen by the people who liked your Page. Measure reach per post in Insights for the last 90 days, work out your average and your best, and plan from the real number rather than the fan count.

1. Cover photo that passes the rules and says something. A product in use, a storefront, your team or your customers. Change it with the season or the campaign; it posts to the feed each time you do.
2. Profile picture that works at 32 pixels. That is the size it shows in the feed. A logo mark beats a wordmark.
3. About section with the essentials. Address, hours, phone and web address live here now, not on the cover. For local businesses, make sure the Page is categorized as a local business so the map and check-ins appear.
4. Three app tabs in order of value. Typically an email sign-up form, a current offer or contest, and a product catalog or reviews. Custom tab images are 111 by 74 pixels; use them to say what is inside.
5. A pinned post. The campaign, event or offer you most want visitors to see this week.
6. Milestones for the company story. Founding, first store, product launches, awards. Five or six are enough.
7. Message response plan. Decide who answers private messages and within what time. Fans will notice if nobody does.

Reach is earned post by post. The patterns in Insights across the Pages we manage are consistent.

Working rules:

• Post one to two times a day, not five. More posts dilute engagement on each and increase hides. Spread them out.
• Watch the first hour. Early likes and comments drive further distribution. Posting when your fans are online, which Insights now shows, matters more than any "best time" chart.
• Keep text under about 80 characters where you can. Short posts get more engagement.
• Ask for the action. "Like if you agree" and "Share with someone who needs this" measurably raise engagement. Use sparingly.
• Mix content with intent. Roughly four posts that entertain, teach or show your customers for every one that sells.
• Respond to comments. Replies count as engagement and improve affinity with the people most likely to buy.

Facebook now offers several ways to pay for distribution, and the economics are still favorable because most competitors are not doing it well.

• Promoted Posts. Pay from about $5 upward to show a post to more of your fans and their friends. Promote only posts that are already performing after the first hour or two.
• Sponsored Stories. Turn a fan's like, check-in or app action into an ad shown to their friends, with their name attached. These tend to have the lowest cost per fan.
• Page Like ads. Standard sidebar ads targeting demographics and interests. In most consumer categories, cost per new fan runs $0.50 to $2.00 in the US with decent targeting; business audiences cost more.
• Facebook Offers. Free for now. A claimable coupon that fans receive by email and that posts to their friends' feeds when claimed.

A reasonable starting budget for a small business is $150 to $500 a month: roughly half on promoting your best posts and half on growing fans among the right people. Track cost per engaged user and, where you can, cost per lead or sale back on your site with campaign-tagged links.

• Chasing fan count. A Page with 20,000 fans bought through contests and 300 people talking about it is worse off than a Page with 3,000 engaged local customers.
• Breaking the cover photo rules. Facebook does enforce them, and the penalty can be an unpublished Page.
• Posting the same thing to Twitter and Facebook automatically. The formats are different, and automated posts receive measurably less distribution.
• Measuring likes instead of reach and clicks. Insights gives you reach, engaged users and virality per post. Use them.
• Having no reason to leave Facebook. Every month you should be moving fans onto your email list and your website, where you control the relationship.

Discover: we export your Insights history, review your last 90 days of posts against reach and engagement, and look at what your fans are actually responding to. Plan: we agree the Page structure, a content calendar with the right mix, the response plan for comments and messages, and a monthly paid budget with targets for cost per engaged user and cost per lead. Build: our social media management team runs the Page and the calendar, our creative campaigns team produces the cover images, photo posts and app tabs, and our performance marketing team runs the Promoted Posts, Sponsored Stories and Like campaigns. Improve: we review reach, engagement and site traffic monthly and move effort toward what works. Because brand, growth, web and technology sit on one team, the Page, the ads and the landing pages on your site are built together.

The Content Program engagement is the representative pattern for this work. Rather than treating the Page as a place to publish announcements, the team built a steady program of photo-led posts around how customers used the product, timed to when fans were online and supported by a small promotion budget on the posts that earned early engagement. Fans were routinely invited back to the site and onto the email list, and reporting tracked reach and clicks rather than likes, which is what made the program defensible when organic distribution tightened.