What do the changes to Facebook pages mean for your brand?
By Natalie @BubbleJobs
I’m sure if you have any kind of presence on Facebook, you will have noticed the changes to the way Facebook pages work. If you’ve posted anything recently, you will have noticed that you are now being requested to ‘promote’ the statuses that you post on your page.
There has been a lot of discontent and a general feeling of outrage amongst those that use their Facebook pages as a promotional tool for their brand. This is because, despite 4,000+ people clicking that ‘like’ button on your page, which allows you to communicate directly with them through their Facebook feed, you are now being prompted by Facebook to pay to promote your status to the people who have already taken the time to like your page. Seems a little bit unfair really.
Well, here’s the information that those that are moaning about it all seem to be forgetting.
1. Firstly, it has been shown that anything you post on a Facebook page, no matter how many likes you have garnered, you will only ever reach approximately 20% of your entire audience. So, if you are lucky enough to have 4,000 Facebook likes on your brand page then every status or link that you post will only ever reach about 800 people. Without promotion it is suggested that you will only reach about 15% of your audience. That means that without promotion, you are only losing out on reaching about 5% of the audience that you would have reached with promotion. Doesn’t seem like such a massive issue now, does it?
2. Depending on how much you are willing to spend, you can pay to ensure that your status or link is seen by absolutely everyone that likes your page. When I tested this, it was going to cost me £7 to put my link in front of the 4,100 people that had liked my Facebook page. Considering that the reach of a status update or a link posted onto a page (prior to promotion being introduced) was approximately 20% of your overall total number of likes, surely paying this minimal fee of £7 to make sure that all of the people who like your page are able to see what you are posting, is reasonable?
3. You do not have to promote every status update or link that you post. Most of the time, you probably aren’t really posting anything that is important enough to need every single person that has liked your Facebook page to see it. As a result of this, you should only be promoting status updates and links that are important and will be of real interest to your Facebook audience as a whole. For example, if you have a new product launching or a special offer. These are things that your entire Facebook audience needs to know. The fact that you were out in the sun all weekend and you have burnt your shoulders or that you are having a good day is not particularly important and therefore, would not need to be promoted. In approaching the new Facebook ‘promotion’ in this way, you will actually stop yourself from spending a lot of money and you could probably confine yourself to about £7 per month.
So instead of complaining about all the changes in the world of Facebook, we should really be embracing them and making the most of them. In many ways, the new promotion feature is a blessing as it allows you to ensure that your entire Facebook audience sees the important updates that you want to promote.
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