Since Facebook became a publicly traded company in May, and subsequently failed to skyrocket on the stock market, there has been a lot of buzz among media members and public-relations professionals about the effects monetization could have on the site. One of the most recent uproars was a rumor that the social-networking giant, which has now reached more than 1 billion users, had begun restricting the visibility of posts made by pages (businesses, entertainers, non-profits, etc., as opposed to personal profiles) to a given percentage of users who had “liked” their page.
In reality, explained Joel Eckman, IT director at PM Advertising and Globalsites.net, Facebook has changed its structure for pages in recent weeks, incorporating both a “subscribe” button next to the “like” button, and an option to “add a page to interest lists.” “Liking” a page appears to show a user’s support for it, but also limits or halts posts from that page from bombarding users’ homepages, especially if the page posts frequently. Additionally “subscribing” to a page seems to remove this limitation, allowing all posts to appear on a user’s homepage in real time.
“[We’ve found] the ability to reach out just by making a post has diminished quite a bit — because, we assume, almost no one has subscribed,” said Eckman.
Since the subscribe option did not receive a lot of buzz or explanation from Facebook when it was first introduced, many users may not be aware that they aren’t seeing updates from pages they have “liked” but not subscribed to, and Eckman suspects, many businesses may be unaware they aren’t reaching their full audience.
There’s the catch — in addition to creating ads, Facebook now allows pages to pay to promote specific content to a targeted audience, essentially overriding the problem of posts only reaching those users who have hit the subscribe button.
Actually, said Eckman, page administrators can create a plan promoting posts to any demographic they choose based on Facebook’s new controls, including age, gender, location, degree of connection with the page, and even interests and activities. It’s a little unclear how some information such as “interests” is collected, however.
“There’s a lot that they hold close to the vest — if it’s too clear how to be number one on everyone’s newsfeed, then everyone would do it,” Eckman said.
He hopes that the new controls will allow some of his clients to better target their content, but he has had trouble interesting most of them in trying the new venture since the social network’s previous generations of targeted advertising proved less effective for them than Google ads, which target users already searching for similar products or services.
Nicholasville-based Web developer and marketing consultant Marti McGinnis said that for marketers at smaller businesses and nonprofits who are uninterested in spending money to promote on Facebook, this new model could prove problematic.
“I know many small organizations that have put all their marketing efforts into the Facebook empire who now are in a bit of a tizzy and feeling the squeeze financially from the new rules,” said McGinnis. “For my nonprofit clients, this poses some serious challenges, though I have always encouraged everyone to maintain their own non-Facebook content via other Web media in the event this free service became a paid one — which now it’s becoming.”
One page managed by McGinnis was created as an online identity for Iota McHippus, McGinnis’ miniature horse, recently certified as a therapy animal. McGinnis noted that the page saw a 90 percent drop in traffic after the changes but has been steadily climbing since.
“As far as steering people to my page, what I did right after Facebook made these changes was I posted some awesome pictures on my wall and invited people to share them with their friends. All this sharing helped bump the post up in people's feeds and gave my link more star power, I think,” McGinnis said. “By extension, I think my algorithms are a little weightier then others who don't inspire such activity. I could be wrong. For me, this is almost all a guessing game. Since then my ‘Daily Insights’ have been climbing up to their regular levels.”
In the end, experts agree that the changes to pages don’t spell the end for businesses or social media professionals, but it is important to explore them. Users can monitor current traffic levels by monitoring the Insights tab at the top of pages they manage, and they can also investigate ad options under the Build Audience drop-down.