Facebook officially kills organic reach for brands, making all your Page "Likes" useless

Originally published on The HUBCOMMS on November 17, 2014 By Omar Akhtar.

You can stop trying to get those Page likes now.
Over the weekend, Facebook finally announced what most marketers knew already, that it will kill organic reach for brand’s Facebook Pages, starting as early as January. This means there’s only one real way to reach the many many people who like your Facebook page, which is to pay for an ad.
To Facebook users, this might seem like a welcome development. Why must we see promotional messages from brands in addition to their ads in our news feeds? However, for marketers who have spent years toiling away, building up a huge following for their Facebook page, the move essentially renders their work completely useless. It’s a stark reminder of the fact that brand’s don’t own the audience they get on the network, they are simply renting them from Facebook.
Facebook is also laying to rest the idea that good content will be rewarded regardless of its algorithm. No matter how creative a brand’s Facebook posts may be, they simply won’t get shown to anymore than a negligible fraction of their followers. With this move, Facebook has completed its transition to a proper media channel, much like television or radio, where no brand presence is for free.
Smarter marketers will have already adapted by beefing up their social media budgets and familiarizing themselves with Facebook ad targeting tools. Make no mistake, there are some excellent features for marketers looking to target and engage audiences on the platform. But the days of hoping for a post to go viral on Facebook are over.