Steve Lambert of the non-profit Center for Artistic Activism wrote a fantastic piece called, ‘Why Facebook Is a Waste of Time—and Money—for Arts Nonprofits,’ and I (of course) love it. With a Facebook account with over 4,000 “likes,” they were only reaching about 3% of their audience.
“This is by design,” writes Lambert, “people think the Facebook algorithm is complicated, and it does weigh many factors, but reaching audiences through their algorithm is driven by one thing above all others: payment. Facebook’s business model for organizations is to sell your audience back to you.”
It turns out that Facebook doesn’t even offer a discount to non-profits to reach their supporters. Classy.
“For now, we’ve found our email newsletters much more effective because at least we know the message reaches the subscribers’ inbox. And while we are no longer investing our time or our donors’ money into Facebook, it’s not a complete departure. We’re letting automated systems repost from our website and from other social networks.”
Emphasis mine. At least you know they got it. Then you can see who opened, and who clicked a link. You can also see who didn’t open your email, and a week later send it to them again. Don’t be dismayed that you don’t have 4,000 email subscribers, or even 400.
When you get 100 people to hand over their email address, then you’ve got a subscriber. Likes and faves are easy, but someone opening an email (in 2018) is raising their hand and saying, “I want more of you.”