​For all the talk of using social media platforms as a place for brands to have conversations, new research suggests there’s little in the way of organic talk happening in the worlds of Facebook, Twitter and other social platforms.

VentureBeat has some interesting insight today from Forrester Research analyst Nate Elliot who says “any marketers who believe they’re having a conversation are [with brands’ fans on Facebook] are delusional.”

According to their data, less than one tenth of one percent of fans like, share, or comment on content produced by the top 50 global brands.

One major reason for the lack of engagement: Facebook’s algorithm. On average only 16 percent of fans will ever see any one piece of content, even though they have indicated they are open to receiving marketing messaging by clicking the “like” button.

But that 16 percent number is from 2012, which might as well be ancient history in the social media world. Organic reach of Facebook posts is hovering around 2 percent for pages with more than 500,000 Likes, Forrester told Venture Beat.

And there’s more:

In fact, Ogilvy said, “Facebook sources” are unofficially telling the agency the organic reach percentage may near zero at some point “in the foreseeable future.”

Those low engagement figures are pretty similar for other platforms, such as Twitter, YouTube, Googole+, and Pinterest.

Instagram is proving the exception to the rule, because there is less clutter. And there is no algorithm filtering what users see.

Read More: Venture Beat

Brief Take: While organic conversations may be a figment of our collective imagination, small, active engagement can drive shared information—another way of spreading a message via social platforms.

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