Facebook’s “pay to play” decision
Date: April 10, 2014Category: Author: Danielle Azar
We all saw it coming, or at least those of us in the “business” did. Late last month, Facebook, the holy grail of social media platforms, all but announced that businesses pages are going to have to pay to have their posts seen by their own followers. Meaning, most of the community you’ve been working so hard to build, engage, and identify with over the past years are NOT going to see your posts unless you are willing to pay to have them seen.
(end of the “free ride”)
The New Terms
According to several sources now, Facebook is in the process of slashing the reach of posts of business pages down to 1-2% of their follower base. So if you were lucky enough to have let’s say 1000 followers who liked your page with the knowledge that they were going to receive your posts in their news feeds, your posts are only going to reach 10-20 of them. If you have 100 likes, as many small business pages do, your posts will reach only 1-2 followers. Awesome.
Why this is Dumb
I’m pretty sure that Facebook users understand what they’re doing when they like a business page. They are probably following either a big brand or smaller local company and they want to hear about promotions they can take advantage of or get a behind-the-scenes look at a company they have come to love.
If the business page they liked is posting garbage, like over-promoting themselves or just posting generic stuff nobody cares about, the Facebook user has the option to UNLIKE the page, without help from the Facebook algorithm telling them what they should or should not see.
Facebook is putting their own interests (profits) before the user experience while adamantly saying the opposite; that this change is to enhance the user experience. This probably wont be a big deal for huge brands like Target or Nike, but for the average small business owner, this decision is disastrous.
But Wait, There’s More…
Not only has Facebook decided to restrict the posts users see from the businesses they actually liked, but if you’ve been on the platform lately, you’ve probably noticed some posts from pages you’ve never heard of in your feed. They are putting posts in your feed that they think you should like, based on your history, but notice, that the ones you see are almost always “sponsored.”
I guess that if you pay them enough, your posts will reach not only your followers, but those who might be interested in you, based on their profiles. Facebook is obviously using your personal information to improve the results of their own advertising platform, what makes you think they aren’t sharing it with other companies who would kill for that information.
Why I’m Only Slightly Mad, Overall
Facebook had its IPO and needs to make un beaucoup du $$ for their stockholders. Facebook has a ton of pressure on itself to prove its profitability because it’s the first company of it’s kind to go public and it needs to show that social media can be a profitable investment. I understand this.
I also understand that they want to target businesses who have been advertising on their platform for free for the past several years. Honestly, it makes sense and I would probably do the same, because nothing is ever free. I just wish that they would think of the little guys (small, local business owners) and maybe punish them differently from those big brands with $10,000 monthly budgets.
Conclusion
I’m not the only one ranting on this, I promise. There has been a lot of outrage over this announcement with many people in the business swearing to move their social efforts to other platforms.
I’m personally not going to go that far (yet), because to most clients, Facebook is still the only platform they know and understand. However, I think it’s important to keep an eye on the following platforms and perhaps planning to diversify my efforts in the near future:
- Google+ – because it’s Google and the platform will probably rule the social media world eventually
- Instagram – they’re owned by Facebook now but they haven’t had time to ruin it quite yet
- Tumblr – seems like a great platform for diverse content, need to explore more
- Reddit – create your own community and see where it takes you
- Twitter – already there but their new look may increase engagement
- BLOGS – already here too, but maybe we can do more to increase reach
I’ll let you know how it goes. If you have any insights, questions, clues, comments, or ideas, please comment. Thanks!