It's not your imagination, and you're not being punished. Facebook decided years ago — publicly — that the feed should favor posts from friends and family over content from pages. Your business page starts every morning at the back of that line. Here's what Meta actually said, what still gets through, and where the freed-up effort earns more.
In January 2018 Facebook announced it was reordering the feed around “meaningful interactions between people,” explicitly telling page owners to expect their reach to decline: posts from friends and family first, public content from pages behind them. Every algorithm change since has kept that hierarchy. So a business page posting into the feed competes not just with every other business, but with the baby photos the feed was rebuilt to favor. The pages that still earn organic reach do it by triggering real conversation — comments and shares between actual people — not by posting more often.
Three things, honestly: Groups — local community groups are where Facebook's actual attention lives, and a business owner who's genuinely helpful there (answering questions, not dropping links) builds more local reputation than a year of page posts. Events and Marketplace still get native distribution. And the page itself still matters as a checkable record — hours, photos, reviews, responsiveness — because people who already found you elsewhere come to verify you're real and open. Treat the page as a listing to keep accurate, not an audience to grow.
The hour a week you were feeding the feed converts better almost anywhere else: the Google Business Profile (where reach isn't throttled and searchers arrive ready to buy), the review-asking system, the email list Facebook can't stand between you and, and a website that answers real questions in text search engines and AI assistants actually read. If reach matters enough to pay for, Facebook's ad targeting is genuinely good and its organic reach is genuinely gone — pay for the reach or reinvest the time, but stop donating unpaid content to a feed built to hide it.
Usually nothing you did: Facebook has deliberately ranked person-to-person content above page content since its 2018 “meaningful interactions” change, and reach has stair-stepped down with later updates. The feed favors conversation between people — pages are structurally behind.
No — volume doesn't fix a structural ranking disadvantage, and low-engagement posts can teach the system your content isn't worth showing. Fewer posts that genuinely start conversations beat daily broadcasting; better yet, be useful in local Groups where the attention actually is.
Keep it, but demote it to a listing: accurate hours, photos, reviews, and fast replies to messages. People use it to verify you're real. Just stop measuring yourself by the reach of posts the feed was designed not to show.
Sometimes — the targeting is real and local awareness can be cheap. But run the same math as any channel: cost per booked customer, against a foundation (profile, reviews, site) that converts. Paying to reach people is honest; expecting free reach isn't available anymore.