Having a big, engaged following on social media platforms to drive organic reach and engagement is great ... until it isn't.
Here's a real life case study from one of my pages I run as a hobby - where I was hitting very substantial organic reach until one day in early May Facebook decided that a recent post had gone against their Community Standards (I don't believe it had, but that's besides the point ... when you play in someone else's sandpit they make the rules, to credit fellow marketer Scott Wilson).
A page reach limitation was placed on this page, which has no estimated time of lifting either.
Overnight the organic reach and engagement was largely wiped out (at least compared to recent performance).
One post that I thought was fine - but an AI algorithm took exception to - was enough to obliterate the performance of this page.
Luckily this is just a fun hobby for me (that lets me test and learn) but imagine if your real business was dependent on the exposure/traffic such a page could generate - what would the impact be on your bottom line?
Can you really afford to be dependent on the organic reach/engagement provided by social platforms, as they are fickle beasts.
You can certainly make the most of the opportunities they provide, and take advantage of all the possible benefits.
But remember that at any time you could do something (no matter how unintentional) that might see your hard work evaporate, sometimes temporarily and sometimes permanently.
It's a good reminder to take stock of just how dependent you are on being allowed to play in the big kids' sandpit ... what is your strategy if you are kicked out?
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