For businesses, social media is like meth. I say this based on encyclopedic knowledge of drugs obtained via Breaking Bad marathons. Meth’s great for a while, but over time it’s harder to get the results you once got. At some point, you’re spending all your time and money thinking about it. And by the time you start worrying about your teeth falling out, it’s too late.
“The average organic reach for posts from Facebook pages in March was 2.6 percent of a brand’s audience. … This percentage dropped to 2.3 percent for pages with more than 1 million likes.”
Other social networks are showing signs of decreased reach as well, albeit less rapidly than Facebook. There are two widely cited reasons for it: 1) Social media sites want to encourage businesses to pay them money for the value they now get for free; and 2) As more people and businesses post to social media more often, everyone gets less attention, so supply and demand push reach down and rates up.