Subscribe RSS
Comment RSSFacebook Promoted Posts Is Bad Business
Written by Michael LevanduskiOctober 16, 2012 # 5:46 pm # Industry News, Specials # 6 Comments
Often times, the small businesses in this world get far less attention than do the bigger, more profitable businesses. However, who is to say that what small businesses have to say will not affect the future decisions and actions of big businesses? Now, I have been looking at article after article today, trying to find something new and exciting happening in the social media world. It was during this period of looking around that I found an article that was published by The Wall Street Journal last Thursday. It is called “What’s a Facebook Follower Worth?” and it tells us of some of the perils that small businesses have found when trying to use their favorite marketing source’s new Promoted Posts.
First, let me remind you of why small businesses fell in love with Facebook as a marketing platform in the first place; because when people think Facebook, they think free. Most small businesses could never even imagine affording the huge marketing campaigns that we see with the country’s big businesses, so they use Facebook and it has so far worked like a charm. Now, of course that has not ended but these small businesses are having some trouble with the idea of Promoted Posts, which kind of ruin the, “free” thing that they had going for them.
Here is the gist of the problem that they are having, as explained by a caterer named Richard Bishop in the Wall Street Journal article;
Facebook “lured us in with free Facebook pages,” says the 35-year-old caterer, referring to small-business owners like himself who have built marketing programs around Facebook. “Now all of a sudden they’re saying a minimal percentage of your fans will see your posts unless you pay. They devalued the value of a fan.”
Obviously Facebook is not to blame, unless of course there is a rule book out there somewhere that says, “Once a company says their services will be free, they are to remain that way forevermore.” Since there isn’t, Facebook really has not done anything wrong. Regardless, it has caused a struggle for small businesses all over the nation, and it seems to them that their marketing platform will soon disappear as a viable option. These companies cannot afford to promote all of their daily posts, and most of their Facebook fans will not even see some of their most important posts.
While looking into other opinions on the subject, I found that I was not the only one who found interest in this new problem for small businesses that use Facebook as a main marketing tool. Personally, though Facebook has not done anything wrong and it would be unwise of them not to have customers pay to Promote Posts, it is hard not to feel a bit bad for these small businesses. The economy is rough to say the least, and the free marketing that Facebook used to offer along with the old value of fans was a beam of light for small businesses. Facebook will probably remain the tool of choice for these small businesses, but marketing on social media will probably no longer be anywhere near the same.
Written by Michael Levanduski
Michael Levanduski is a news reporter at Performance Marketing Insider. He’s been a writer at one level or another for the past 15+ years. He has three kids and lives in Grand Rapids, MI.
There are six comments. Join the discussion.
Share/Bookmark this!
Hi Michael, let me start by saying I can’t believe nobody has commented on this yet. It’s a great topic and one that I hold near to my heart because I am a social media manager on a small scale for the most part. I cringed when I saw the new promoted posts option roll out for these very reasons listed in your article. I would like to hope that if you have a business page with under 1k fans and it is active you should be reaching the majority of your fans only due to the facebook algorithm or pagerank as they like to call it. I am a firm believer that a slow page is only slow because of the admin and the posts being posted. I have pages that are active and some that aren’t so active and I can measure the amount of activity basically by the amount of posting on each page. Some pages can post anything and get interaction while others would have to post a breaking news story in order to get action on the page. But I think a lot has to do with the general activity such as posting every day or just two three times a week. There are so many variables at stake here it’s just hard to nail it down. I sure hope FB realizes this and will let it’s natural pagerank continue along with their promoted posts. Because then the small business can still have a chance to reach their audience at the very least. Whereas if it’s just going to reach everyone if it’s a promoted post then kiss FB good bye for all small business pages. I have restaurants that posts specials every day and those are the pages that do well in terms of activity and reach, opposed to some of my other pages that don’t post every day in the same industry.
I’m wondering now if other marketers are reluctant to share this information because it will hurt business by way that small businesses won’t want to pay for social management because it will be worthless unless you are using promoted posts according to the article in the Journal.
Thanks for bringing it up and I hope the small businesses can stay a float in this mad world we live in lol
I agree that this is certainly going to hit small business owners hard. The changes to Facebook EdgeRank leave us no choice other than to pay for promoted posts if we want our stuff to be seen and shared on Facebook. It boils down to us spending more time on Facebook NOT promoting our business so we can increase our EdgeRank and in the long run, we still have to pay anyway.
Ileane recently posted..How to Boost Your Brand on Facebook and Drive Traffic to Your Blog
I must admit that it is more strange to me, that people believed that there is such a thing as a free lunch?
Screen real-estate equals money to Facebook. Why would they allow their user’s screens to fill up with free Fan page updates, when paid advertising/promotion is what pays the bills.
Facebook is not “free” even to its human users, who give up their privacy to a large part. Among other by having Facebook’s tracker robots follow them around on every web-site/page they visit, scraping keywords, and creating future profitable interest graphs for each user. Similar to other new trackers, such as Wal-Mart/Kosmix, LinkedIn, and quite a few others.
Some of these can only track by following the Twitter feeds and posted links, but Facebook have a very unique position of having both accurate user info, self-reported user-interests, AND through the trackers following the user around also the interests NOT reported directly to Facebook.
But bottom-line. Screen real-estate has value. Why would Facebook give it away for free?
DeeCee recently posted..SocialSearcher – Anonymous scraper
I think is bad for your business if you do in limited. Facebook is good platform for getting traffic and also to grow business. You can posts your stuff on Facebook but it’s social networking website and all types of people read you stuff. Then not surely said that you will niche customer. But yes Facebook also helps you in some kind to grow your business.
I’m not against them charging to spread your message on a promoted post. Just don’t mess with the way you reach your fans on a regular basis. If your page is interesting enough to attract fans than you should be able to reach those fans. If you need help or a push and need to have paid so be it. Just don’t mess with the algorithm for everyone.
Chris Picanzo recently posted..Facebook and your business page
Promoted posts rock! Small business’s pay for search traffic right? Wy wouldn’t they promote posts on Facebook. They create a ton of engagement and sharing…I LOVE promoted posts!!