Digital imaging businesses smarting over Facebook’s decision to severely limit their ability to communicate with people who “like” their business pages on the social network recently got an explanation from the web titan about the policy change.
But many aren’t buying it.
“Facebook wants us to pay for real estate that we used to get for free,” said Leslie Nuccio, creative strategist, Meltwater (meltwater.com), a social media monitoring and press relations firm.
Meredith Reinker, director of marketing for UsedPhotoPro and Roberts Camera (robertscamera.com) added: “As a marketing director and a Facebook page manager, I agree they pulled somewhat of a bait and switch in terms of how they initially marketed their platform to businesses.”
Before the policy change, the imaging industry and other businesses absolutely loved the Facebook “Like” system. Essentially, any person who clicked a button and liked a business page on Facebook regularly received posts from that business in their Facebook News Feed. (The News Feed is the middle column on a Facebook home page that shows posts from friends, from businesses liked on Facebook and old-school advertising posts.)
The Like was a marketer’s dream, in that a business on Facebook could stay in constant—sometimes daily—contact with customers by sending out interesting posts related to their product or services.
Marketers loved it.
Sadly, that cozy relationship between businesses and Facebook users began to degrade about two years ago. Facebook decided to begin to severely throttle back the reach of posts that businesses were sending people who had liked their page.
The result: These days, as little as 6% or less of people who have liked a business page on Facebook actually receive any particular post that business sends over the social network, according to Marshall Manson, a managing director at Ogilvy & Mather. Moreover, Manson predicts it’s “only a matter of time” before the organic reach of businesses on Facebook will plummet to zero.
“To be fair to the brands here, Facebook has put on a real dog-and-pony show over the past several years to convince companies that building up their followers is a great idea. And that the big payoff is the earned media that we were getting in those News Feeds,” said Meltwater’s Nuccio.
Indeed, Facebook’s Borland is quick to note that any business that wants to override Facebook’s content-filtering system and get a post into the News Feed to all the people who have liked their business page on Facebook can still do so.
You just have to pay for it now—an undesirable option for some imaging businesses. “We paid once to advertise on Facebook and would not do it again,” said Jim Megargee, cofounder of MV Photo Labs (mvlabs.com). The results were well below market average in other media.”
While it may take many imaging businesses some time to cotton to Facebook’s new pay-for-exposure reality, they still have some ways right now to deal with the new regime:
- Encourage Your Facebook Followers to Check “Get Notifications.” People who have liked your Facebook page can signal to Facebook they really do want to see posts from your business if they check the Get Notifications option.
- Encourage Your Followers to Recommend Your Posts. Facebook automatically increases the reach of a post from your business if one or more of your followers recommend your post to a friend or colleague. Encourage your followers to do this with every post you make.
- Beef Up Your E-mail Marketing. Many businesses are aggressively seeking the e-mail addresses of people who have liked them on Facebook. The theory: If people have gone out of their way to like your business on Facebook, they’ve already signaled they want communications from you. With e-mail, you can go directly to these people without worrying about a middleman.
- Bite the Bullet; Buy the Boost. Even though the deal is not nearly as good as before (posts used to be free), buying a “Boost” from Facebook to reach everyone who’s liked your page is still relatively inexpensive compared to other advertising.
- Check Out Other Social Media. Facebook’s change has “also been the reason for us to expand into so many alternative social media channels,” said Roberts Camera’s Meredith Reinker. “You can’t just be on Facebook anymore.”
A journalist with 20 years of experience, Joe Dysart is now an Internet speaker and business consultant based in Manhattan.
