As Facebook continues to tweak its algorithms to benefit both its wallet and its users, South Florida business owners and social media managers must keep up with the social media giant to optimize their chances of getting noticed online.

This is especially important in our region, where visitors and newcomers rely on information online when making choices for dining and entertainment. If you continuously try to push quality content and news to your followers on your Facebook business Page, these changes affect you.

In the past several weeks, there’s been a dramatic decline in Facebook’s organic reach – or the number of people your social media posts reach without boosting or “sponsoring” it through Facebook’s advertising options. This change is affecting all types of business pages – including nonprofits, social causes and news stations. The reason behind this decrease is to give paid advertisers the upper hand. If you pay to sponsor your post, more people will see it.

Previously, photos were the primary driving factor behind engagement and likes. Now, accordingly to analytics company Socialbakers, posts with photos now get the lowest amount of response from Facebook users and videos get the highest. If you’re not going to pay for your posts, consider adding some native video clips to increase the likelihood of more of your followers actually seeing the post. However, even an unsponsored video post goes against the fact that Facebook favors paid posts.

In our opinion, the best response to these changing algorithms is simply to start paying to sponsor your Facebook updates. Target your posts and ads to the target audience for your business – European visitors, Coral Gables residents, Brickell professionals and so on.

You can push back against Facebook’s changes by promoting your news and visuals on other social media sites such as Twitter and Instagram. They don’t differentiate among types of unpaid content.

And if you’re the face of your company – a South Beach chef, Miami real estate developer or Wynwood artist – use your personal Facebook page to distribute news.

However, the best option for most businesses is to work with an experienced social media agency that can provide good counsel and implement a combination of these alternatives. More and more, BoardroomPR’s social media clients are allotting ad dollars to pay for sponsored Facebook posts in addition to utilizing other popular sites for your content. Finally, when your business has important news to share, post it to your personal page of your management team and key employees.