Paying to Make Sure My Fans See My Content?
Then I was involved in a conversation today with Mike Mueller and some folks talking about a new spin on Facebook advertising. Recently, Facebook has started promoting advertisers’ content through “Trending Articles”. Well, now they are giving business page owners the option to “Promote” specific posts from their pages – for a fee. Here’s a page they released to explain this a bit. In typical Facebook form, they really weren’t super clear about how this new program affects their current EdgeRank (the algorithm they use to serve up your content in your connections’ newsfeeds based on a variety of events). Currently, if you ‘like’ a page, it means that you want to see everything that that page shares on their wall – in your news feed. Whether or not you are there to see it at the time is another story. However, theoretically, if I only had a handful of friends and liked a handful of pages it would be relatively easy for me to see everything they all shared in my news feed as long as I have it sorted by most recent posts. This leads me to believe that, as things stand now, I can potentially expose my content to everyone that likes my page. Facebook says that these promoted posts will appear on your fans’ timelines on desktop and mobile. I would imagine they are saying this for a reason. It begs the question: “Will this new program effectively be suppressing my content from my current fans?”
Can Facebook Afford to Play Games with Their Fan Base?
I think this will really hurt Facebook’s odds of bumping up their already disappointing share price. It’s no secret that the company has lost a ton of its value since the IPO. Facebook may not care since they were forced to go public due to their legal status of having a certain number of investors. What they do care about is keeping their user base intact. This action will discourage many to either take down their pages, abandon them, or move to another platform. Driving page owners off of Facebook will also drive the actual users who own those pages away from the platform as well – their user base. The less people you know on Facebook, the less time you spend on Facebook and the more likely you will be to move from Facebook to where those people are going. Social Networking is very momentum driven. Just like in 2006 when Facebook was Nowheresville and MySpace was all the rage, by 2007 it was catching fire and by 2008 it was the big dog on the block. Now, none of this matters if you don’t have anywhere else to go but….
You do
What does this mean to your business?
Well for one, you’d better get moving and go claim your business. If it’s not up in Google Places you’d better add it and claim it. Then you’d better make sure all the info is right, read all the reviews and pictures to make sure they all look good. While there’s nothing you can do about the bad reviews, you now have the ability to reach out to those people to make things right. Boy, do I wish everywhere I ever worked had the opportunity to try and make things right with their disgruntled customers.
Now, you will want to upload some more content such as videos, pictures and written text. You should also put some sort of promotion and maybe even a virtual tour of your place. Check out a few good examples of what is possible with your new page. Here are some very nice pages that I found in the Google+ local tab. These pages have not been claimed at the time of this post so NOTHING has been done to them – yet. They look good right from the beginning. I would be very interested as to how much better they will look once their marketing people get their hands on them:
Now this doesn’t mean you have to abandon your Facebook page or strategy. You will however have to do some more research and see if spending the money to get your content in front of someone you once didn’t is justifiable. When it was completely free, was it ringing your cash register in any way? If not, maybe you don’t spend the money. If that’s the case, be prepared for lower engagement and traffic numbers. Personally, I like that the free option that Google is offering is better than the Facebook option ever was and right now it would be impossible for me to ignore this as a business owner. Oh, and it will get you more organic eyeballs on Google.com than before too. Seems like a no brainer.
-PH
Facebook is definitely shooting itself in the foot, long term; but for now the sheep will pay whatever they are asked to get their message in front of more eyeballs. As I have preached so much in the past, people, for the most part, still look at social as a one-way advertising medium – the old megaphone metaphor- rather than a medium to foster engagement. Long term impact, businesses and individuals will realize that paying for preferred placement is not generating ROI, and will begin drifting away to other platforms.
I refer to Google+ as the thinking person’s platform. Yeah, it hasn’t caught on with the masses like FB, but the quality of engagement is so good, G+ cannot be ignored going forward.
I’m with you @joespake:disqus Google+ is better suited to allow small businesses to really engage their audience – especially with these new developments.
Finally! Someone else is saying what I’ve been thinking/saying for the past couple of years! Yes, there is some value to all the Social Media hoopla – but some of it is just hoopla. At some point, a business must function as a business, not as a Facebook “friend” trying to have relational ‘engagement’ with those it actually wants to do business with – unless your business IS ABOUT relational engagement!
Hey, don’t get me wrong. This stuff will work for some folks – just not most. I think the reviews and the SEO juice that Google offers is a really nice feature and free is hard to beat. Facebook needs to make some improvements – and fast – if they want to stay competitive. Business is in business to do business after all…..