Facebook just devalued "Facebook Pages"

[bill]

http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-screws-social-media-marketers-2013-12 [businessinsider.com]

Facebook Slightly Tweaked How The Site Works — And It Screwed An Entire Profession

Facebook brand pages are suddenly getting a lot less traffic, and it's threatening the entire social media marketing industry.

...

So here's a hypothesis: Facebook's News Feed tweak wasn't only about getting "higher quality content" in the News feed. It was as much about reducing the reach of free ads on Facebook. Now, if a brand wants exposure on Facebook, it's going to have to buy it from Facebook.

[taswiqonline]

good

Company of Facebook trying to develop itself


Advertising Facebook

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

...and that folks is why you build your following on your own site and on the profiles of other people. You don't need Facebook pages because, well, because this can happen when you don't control the domain name.

There have always been two ways to promote your brand/site with Facebook. The first is to set up a page on Facebook and promote that and the second is to change the links that point to your facebook page and have them post a snippet of your content on the profiles of others. Option two means you focus content generation on YOUR site and have no facebook page to maintain(less resource intensive).

The second method is true viral marketing and it's looking so much better now. Facebook, not unlike Google, is making itself less relevant by getting too greedy imo, they forget that they are built on the work of others(they produce no content of their own).

[brotherhood of LAN]

pay to play, hardly surprising where there's a market for it and FB seem to be learning how to better exploit their position. Maybe they'll end up justifying their floating share price after all.

[netmeg]

It's a good time to start your own mailing list.

[physics]

change the links that point to your facebook page and have them post a snippet of your content on the profiles of others

Sgt_Kickaxe can you please clarify what you mean by this? Thanks!

[hannamyluv]

It's a good time to start your own mailing list.

Except that with the kind of changes Gmail is making, which are bound to go industry wide eventually - not to mention the market share Gmail already owns, I am not sure email marketing has much of a future either.

[brotherhood of LAN]

OT, Gmail's changes have pro's and con's and at worst prevent you from seeing log file type info you'd get from a direct hit on your images, you can still track opens and re-opens if you know what you're doing.

As in both cases, it's merely adapting and both are always going to want to be a space where advertisers & consumers can meet up... being the middle men that they are.

[hannamyluv]

at worst prevent you from seeing log file type info you'd get from a direct hit

I wasn't talking about that. I am taking about their tabs. Do you know when the last time I looked at my "Promotions" tab was? It was to go in and delete the emails in there. They are making it harder to work for eyeballs.

Most email marketers I know have said it has not affected much yet, because so many people look at email on their phones, and the changes have not happened there yet. But how long do you think that will last?

[brotherhood of LAN]

Gotcha, indeed that is a different problem and from what I've heard it's more KW related. I wonder if "email to a friend" style emails go to inbox.

It seems there's definitely scope for understanding the social graph better (though having access to it is one thing)... and getting people to recommend products via their own feeds would better guarantee an audience, and understanding who best to target would be an interesting task in itself.

[breeks]

I have just about given up on Facebook, this is just one more reason. Only about 1% of followers will see a post unless you pay to promote.

Last post I made with a little over 7000 likes to page "68 people saw this post"

[engine]

I am not the least bit surprised.
As a business shouldn't we expect to pay?
What makes it more difficult to swallow is because it was free.

[alika]

We checked with our FB account rep, and we were told last Friday that the change in algorithm was to Facebook mobile exclusively. The change was to give more focus to news stories and text over just graphics.

[ember]

No one should be depending on free traffic as a business model, not free search engine traffic and not free FB traffic. Why? Because it can disappear in the blink of an eye.

[topr8]

>>engine

agree regarding surprise
agree regarding businesses paying

although i do think FB have encouraged businesses to promote via a FB page and those 'likes' have often cost money, it seems like a bit off to not be able to get eyeballs from those who have already liked you.

as a very niche business, who does have business pages on fb - and whose competitors are using 'personal' pages, it does seem pointless promoting a business page ... i could have a personal page with less 'friends' than the average teenager and be much better able to message my 'friends' than with a business page messaging my 'likes'

[inbound]

There are a huge number of small businesses that could be harmed by this. Many small, service based, local businesses that decided to build facebook profiles rather than websites are going to see their communication options reduced. It'll be interesting to watch this develop.

[Musicarl]

Anything we post with a link has been getting burried lately, but plain text does pretty well. If you can find a way to get your message across in words, there still might be some free Facebook marketing in your future.

[ChanandlerBong]

we have gained ENORMOUSLY from this, not sure why but our "was seen by" % has quadrupled in last few days. We post content snippets to get people to our site (agree with Sgt Kickaxe, the priority has to be your own site/domain, not feeding the FB beast). We were close to giving up, so low were the views/likes/shares, but this has been a real boost. We're NOT expecting it to last.

[Tonearm]

agree with Sgt Kickaxe, the priority has to be your own site/domain, not feeding the FB beast

I'm not getting it. What is this alternative FB marketing method mentioned by you and the Sgt Kickaxe?

[hannamyluv]

We post content snippets to get people to our site

We do this too, but we have not seen any change really, to the plus or negative.

[shopindexer]

We have seen an decline of traffic from Facebook. Our facebook page has about 1 million fans and both traffic and amount of talks are dropping.

[physics]

so many people look at email on their phones, and the changes have not happened there yet.

If you use the gmail app on your phone, the promotions 'tab/folder' is indeed an issue already :/

As a business shouldn't we expect to pay?

The thing that bothers me is that as businesses we were trying to generate shareable content without necessarily focusing on ROI. Now, if you have to pay for each post you want people to see, you're going to be a lot more focused on exactly how much money you might make from that post, rather than other factors such as will people actually find the content useful or interesting. It'd almost be better if FB charged a flat fee to set up a Facebook page and then didn't ignore all of the posts to that page, rather than making people decide how much they want to pay to promote each post (though people could still have that option).

[engine]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld shopindexer

Having built this behemoth, FB is holding some control over those that have put great effort into building a profile on the service.

We have a choice, an we can put our time elsewhere. Additionally, we can put our budgets elsewhere. The problem for many is that it was free, and now it's going to cost $, and that's a bitter pill to swallow.

Many on the Internet have this hangover from the past that things are free. For many years now it's been changing to a paid format. We have to get used to it, and we have to find the most cost-effective ways to market our businesses.

For those of you paying to get noticed, how has it worked for you?

[Tonearm]

For those of you paying to get noticed, how has it worked for you?

I put an obscene amount of time into trying to make FB ads profitable but I eventually had to give up. I tried every single type of FB ad. From what I read, the only consistently profitable marketables on FB are weight-loss, dating, and games.

[Tonearm]

There have always been two ways to promote your brand/site with Facebook. The first is to set up a page on Facebook and promote that and the second is to change the links that point to your facebook page and have them post a snippet of your content on the profiles of others.

Could someone elaborate on #2? How are the snippets of your content being posted on the profiles of others?

[hannamyluv]

How are the snippets of your content being posted on the profiles of others?

Well, for our site, we post links and previews of new articles to our page and our readers then share and like them, which causes them to get shared on their profile pages. Since the content ultimately points back to the main site, the readers who share are pointing people back to our site rather than our FB page.

[Tropical Island]

... Facebook mobile exclusively.

We just ran a promotion on our page with almost 29,000 likes.

Total reach was 50,592 with only 1,341 naturals (2.7%). The rest was paid.

A promotion from Oct. 29 reached 59,264 with 6,862 naturals
(11.6%)

That's quite a difference.

I don't consider the naturals free. I paid for FB ads over the last 2 years to build up my likes. They have now virtually destroyed that investment.

What's the point of having a large number of likes if they don't present your posts to them. Just another money grab.

[Tonearm]

Well, for our site, we post links and previews of new articles to our page and our readers then share and like them, which causes them to get shared on their profile pages. Since the content ultimately points back to the main site, the readers who share are pointing people back to our site rather than our FB page.

OK, so the idea is the links you post to your FB page should point to your own site, not back to your FB page?

Just another money grab.

Personally I wouldn't mind paying for FB ads if I could find a way to make them profitable.

[hannamyluv]

OK, so the idea is the links you post to your FB page should point to your own site, not back to your FB page?

Yes. We don't get chatty on our FB page with asking people to respond to thoughts or posting pics. We simply post links to new articles. The readers get chatty in response to our links on the page - which we respond to, but when they share, they are sharing a link to our site.

[dethfire]

I've noticed this for a long time now. Since they added the option to promote posts. I have 22k likes and an unpromoted post will be lucky to hit 500 views. It's not worth my time anymore. I'll keep using FB, but I'll stop promoting posts and investing much time in it.