Facebook has had its ups and downs when it comes to marketing.
It was the first social media platform to launch ads, and it has since become a benchmark for how other social sites run their ad algorithms.
Of course, it hasn’t been without its controversies.
The founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, recently announced plans to reduce the impact of ads on user news feeds.
It’s a move that many see as a hit to advertisers and marketers alike.
But don’t worry quite yet. Even with algorithm changes, Facebook is still a powerhouse for growing your social reach.
Here’s why.
Why Facebook is still a powerful marketing tool
If you compare it to every other social platform out there, Facebook is still the biggest.
It now has over 2 billion monthly active users and over 1 billion daily active users. And they grew to this size within the span of 13 years.
Let’s put these figures into context. According to TechCrunch, no other platform has reached this many monthly active users:
- YouTube has 1.5 billion monthly active users.
- WeChat has 889 million monthly active users.
- Instagram has 700 million monthly active users.
- Twitter has 328 million monthly active users.
- Snapchat has an estimated 255 million monthly active users.
Though YouTube and Instagram are putting in the effort, Facebook remains on top.
And 93% of marketers admit to using Facebook advertising regularly. That represents roughly 3 million businesses that use Facebook strictly for marketing purposes.
But despite Facebook’s widespread use, marketers are worried about the recent algorithm changes.
According to Recode, some marketers have been reporting ad impression decreases and cost increases since January of 2018.
That might leave some skeptical about the future of Facebook for advertising.
While it’s unlikely that Facebook will abandon their advertisers altogether (they still earned $7.68 billion in ad sales in Q1 of 2017), it’s possible that new changes might affect paid ads at some point.
But even if paid ads go the way of the dodo, there are still plenty of ways you can use Facebook to market your business.