Facebook recently began a new program in which owners of pages can pay to promote the posts on their pages so that more people see them. Facebook states that no changes will be made to the way you receive posts in your news feed, but because Facebook is restricting the number of people reached for each particular post, news and information from your favorite pages may not show up in your news feed unless you add them to a list. [You can read this article about how to make customized lists for Facebook.]
What this means for you is that posts I make to The Peaceful Mom Facebook page may or may not come up in your news feed, so you may miss them.
If you follow The Peaceful Mom (thank you!) and want to make sure that you receive the latest updates, you may want to do one of more of the following:
*Click here to go the The Peaceful Mom Facebook Page. Hover over the “like” button and when the pop up box appears (this may take a minute), click “Show in News Feed.” This hopefully will ensure that you receive all of the posts in your feed.
*Comment on and like posts that you see in your news feed from The Peaceful Mom. Commenting tells Facebook that you want to see more of these posts.
*Follow me on Twitter (click here). It works a bit differently, but with the same basic idea that news and information from the people you follow comes up in a live feed.
*You can also sign up here for my FREE daily e-newsletter which brings every post directly to your e-mail inbox between 4:00 and 7:00 p.m. each day. I have a new RSS feed option as well. Just click the orange icon in the header above.
Please let me know if you have any questions. 🙂
Have a Peaceful Day!
Kimberlee
UPDATE: Here is a screen shot of what I am talking about. The post about this article according to Facebook is reaching 1876 people out of my 19,000+ fans. If I want to reach more I have to pay to have this post “promoted”. The top of the box says,”Get more people who like your Page to see this post.”
I am sure that not all 19,000 people are online at one time, so this number is most assuredly affected by that fact, however, it seems clear that if I want more people to see the post, I will need to pay and I choose not to do so at this time.
Facebook addresses this concern: https://www.facebook.com/help/promote?campaign_id=392433900800084&placement=cta_videobutton&creative=vidoeaction It notes that no change will occur to your current posting if you do not pay to promote. 🙂
My wife reads your blog and she told me to stop by and take a look at this post. I do social media marketing for a number of businesses in my local area. @Kimberlee . . . essentially what you are saying is correct. Depending on the interactions that your facebook page gets, your posts will generally only show to a limited number of your fans. I believe it is about 16% of your fans on a consistent basis.
Facebook is basically readily admitting this fact and giving you the option to pay to have it appear to more of your fans. I’m not quite sure how I feel about it yet, but it could be a very expensive option!
Thanks so much for that information Tim. We’ll see how it all works out, won’t we. 🙂
Check out a blog post by the guy who wrote the book “Duct Tape Marketing”. He had a more positive spin on it which was interesting – http://www.ducttapemarketing.com/blog/2012/05/31/why-facebook-is-letting-you-promote-to-your-fans-and-why-i-think-you-should/
Thanks Tim!
Besides time, this is one example of why I chose to not do a facebook page for my blog. I know my blog readership may suffer, but I cannot justify the time it takes to maintain more than one place for my blog.
Do you think that’s a bad choice on my part?
I think that there are advantages and disadvantages to using Facebook for your business. For now, I am sticking with it because it is working for me. I definitely think that you should use some avenues of social media if you are serious about growing your business, but that could be Twitter, Pinterest, You Tube or Google Plus for example. You have to decide what your priorities are in life and if you are just blogging for fun, I wouldn’t worry about it at all.
That is like I said. To promote a certain post you can pay more. Your general reach will remain the same. A little google work will lead you to several articles explaining it.
It’s important to note that this technically isn’t something that’s brand new on Facebook. When timeline was released, things changed. They used a new algorithm which meant that not everything was showing up on every fans page. If you have recent posts that are getting a lot of attention (shares, likes, comments) your “edge rank” was higher meaning you had more “reach”.
Think of it like this: if you have a brand new website that you throw up and do nothing with, very few people will ever find out about it and no one is going to visit. If you have a website that you spend time blogging on and promoting, people find it, love it, comments are abundant and you have a lot of traffic.
Yes, one way to have a larger reach IS to pay Facebook to promote that. The other is to have “organic reach” by having a lot of interaction on your page by your fans. You can’t blame Facebook for finding a way to make some money off of something that nearly a billion people use for free. But there are ways to continue to promote your fan page and create a stronger farther reach without paying as well.
Some suggested reading:
http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/22/facebook-edgerank/
http://www.marismith.com/tool-measures-your-facebook-edgerank-score/
http://www.rpmconsultants.us/profiles/blogs/whaddya-mean-my-facebook-fans
Thanks so much Dawn–very helpful!
Dear Peaceful Mom
Unless this information came directly to you from FB or they told the media that themselves, I wouldn’t believe it; have you checked Snopes?
I just added a screen shot of what I am seeing Sharon. Unless I am misunderstanding, the posts to my page are being limited and if I want them to reach more people, I will need to pay.
This is not quite true. While your business FEED will not be affected you WILL be able to promote a certain post more. The amount of people who will see your feed will be the same as always, however if you want to pay so that 100% of the people who subscribe to your page see a certain post THEN you can pay for that. Posts still come automatically for FREE. You can still have a successful business page, reach your audience as you have in the past AND it’s free. 🙂
I just added a screen shot of what is on my page from Facebook. Unless I misunderstand (which is entirely possible), Facebook is saying that I need to pay to reach more people.
I wonder if it would work the same with regular pages? Because if that’s not the case, I might just make a page that needs to be added as a friend vs. a fan page.
I think it is just fan pages.