Facebook No Longer Marketing Asset

time to go out with a staple gun and some good'ol leaflets...

I guess it depends on how you define facebook's "value" as a marketing platform. If you define "value" as being free, well then I guess you could say it's losing it's value. However, if it's value is defined by being able to reach people then I think the changes may make it better for that.

Before, everything you posted may have shown up in someone's feed... but so did every post from every one of their friends and all the pages they've liked, etc. So while it may have been in their feed, the likelihood of them noticing it was relatively low - especially for active users who have a lot of friends, apps and pages they like. It was also difficult to determine how many people actually saw what you posted, vs. how many clicked through.

Now a lot of that clutter has been filtered out, and by paying a nominal fee you are guaranteeing that a certain number of people will see your post. If your goal with facebook marketing is to effectively reach people this seems like it's a better option.

DeJager said:

It's severely hindered the visibility of my projects without me paying extra to promote my posts.

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I'm curious how you're gauging this? is it based on facebook's stats for reach, or a secondary metric like video views or page hits? i.e. are you seeing traffic driven by FB dropping? It would be interesting to see a comparison between click through rate before the changes, after the changes, and through a promoted post. My guess is that while the second is likely lower than the first, the third may have a much higher click through than before.

Of course the 'value' also depends on what you're doing with the traffic driven by facebook. If it's generating sales, then you have to gauge the cost against the revenue generated - but if you're just trying to get people to see your work then paying anything may be too much.

I agree with you that Facebook has gotten cluttered with massive amounts of posting, but now instead of my friends cluttering up my news feed, it is advertisements and "suggested" pages from companies I have no interest in.

I see the only real benefit of using Facebook is to increase awareness of my projects. However, if I have to pay $5 per post to reach more than 50-100 people then that will add up. Who knows if that money spent will be worth it in the long run. I really don't want to spend $5 or $10 every time I post something for a decent amount of people to even have the ability/chance to see it.

Ultimately, I just wish that everybody on my friends list would have the opportunity to see my posts. Let the users decide (they can always opt out).


* I'm basing my impressions on the Facebook stats that are available now through recent changes.

Yeah, if you're just trying to build awareness then paying to reach people is a tough call. It might be worth it, but once you're considering paying it's probably worth looking at other options you could be spending the money on - i.e. google ads or youtube promoted videos.

If you're not going to spend money on it then I'm not sure there's many other options out there right now. There's certainly twitter, pinterest, etc, but none of them tend to drive the traffic that facebook does (or did).

Weirdly enough after dropping significantly after these advertising prospects appeared, my page has picked up again and I consistently have at least "20 people talking about this" (which isn't so bad when the page has 300 likes. It's better than when I had 200 likes and "1 person talking about this". Perhaps though, I've decided to make posts on a more regular basis, and I think this involves the likers more and they are ultimately more likely to like something.

The whole $1 for a message is a bit spastic though IMO

i've noticed less and less facebook usage in general... perhaps it's dying out like myspace did...

I've come to quickly realize that using Facebook for marketing and networking is quickly losing its value.

The main thing I worry about now is that my posts and status updates only reach about 12% of my "friends". My business posts only reach about 20%. You can reach more people if you are willing to pay Facebook $5 so your post will reach 3K-5.5K people or $10 to reach 6K to 11K people.

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You know, I never really got the point of Facebook as a marketing tool. I did see it as a way to engage with your clients/peers/friends more than anything. I found you're far better off using email as a marketing tool than Facebook.

At $5 or $10 per post to each that many people (amounting to about 1c per person) isn't really a bad deal in the end. As a user (and even as a sender) it should in theory cut down on the clutter from useless mind dulling posts that so many people and businesses post. If you have to pay some dollars out of your pocket every time you hit send, you might make better posts in the long run. It's not a go at you, I'm guilty of it too.

As a networking tool, I understood that this only happens once you get over a particular amount of friends. Who knows, FB seems to change their mind enough.