Saw an article by Chris Gayomali at fastcompany.com that ruined my day. Gayomali wasdiscussing a recent report from Forrester, amarket research firm. The report, entitled “Facebook has Finally Killed Organic Reach. What Should Marketers Do Next?”, written by Nate Elliott. Elliot’s report examined what social relationship[read media] strategies work. And, according to both Elliott and Gayomali, Facebook and Twitter are NOT among them.

Some highlights[or lowlights if you dedicate time to Facebook and/or Twitter like I do]…

First, Facebook recently announced that it is changing the rankings of certain posts generated by lots of small businesses – like posts by a local realtor suggesting you stop by an open house. And by change, Facebook apparently means “reducing”. Those types of posts will be seen less frequently in the nearly 1.5 billion Facebook news feeds spanning the globe. Facebook claims that it surveyed users and there were lots of complaints about too many useless promotional posts in their news feed. But Facebook apparently would be happy to put that same content in feeds – if the same realtor buys an ad.

Is that a huge blow to small business folk? Maybe not, when you consider that according to Gayoli only 2% of posts by brands on Facebook or Twitter actually reach followers. And engagement rates are even worse – .07%.

Elliot suggests that brands stop making Facebook the centerpiece of their marketing efforts. By doing so, brands waste time and money on efforts that don’t deliver value. So, what should brands do instead? Email. According to Elliott, email gets delivered 90% of the time, while Facebook is at 2%. “If you have to choose between adding a subscriber to your email list or gaining a Facebook fan, go for email every time.”

Good to know. Ironically I tweeted this and will post on Facebook tomorrow