As you know, Facebook likes to change things. Which shouldn’t be a problem because it is their platform and they make the rules there. But it affects lots of people, likely you included.
They made some changes about a year ago now that have recently come to my attention. Basically, they told us how it was going to be for business pages moving forward.
“We’re getting to a place where because more people are sharing more things, the best way to get your stuff seen if you’re a business is to pay for it,” a Facebook spokesperson said. Translation: we found out a good way to make money and we’re going to capitalize on it. Big time. (see Adage article for more details.)
They said that eventually all organic reach would stop and the only way businesses would be able to reach their own fans would be to pay for it. In other words, those are not really your fans.
You may have seen the “boost post” function on the admin side of your page and wondered what it was. You may have even paid to do it at some point. But I doubt you’d like to pay for it every time.
Enter list building
Ask any prominent marketer online and they will tell you how important list building is. They’ll tell you conversion rates are much higher if you’re marketing to your own list. Heck, they’ll even tell you that building a list should be one if your top priorities, period.
And I hope you are.
With changes like this happening in Facebook, it makes me wonder just how long it will be before other social networks find a way to do something similar. I’m not mad at them, that’s brilliant. It just means we can’t rely on them to hold our business database and then get mad when they change the rules. It’s their platform, we just borrow a small piece.
That being said, I hope you’re building a list. I hope you’re asking your fans regularly to join your list in case they never see your posts again after today. Hopefully they love you enough to join.
If you need help, let me know. Oh, and while you’re at it, you can join my list right here.
Wow – I had no idea Facebook was going to require every business page post to be paid. Always good to have multiple avenues to connect with people.
Yeah I was kinda surprised too actually. But, it’s their platform so they can do what they want. And you’re very right…love having the option to have multiple touchpoints. Thanks for stopping by!