Facebook just announced that they plan on killing the reach of overly promotional Facebook Page updates starting in January 2015. Predictably, marketers and Page Owners are freaking out.
Did Facebook seriously just announce more drop in Reach?
How will we advertise coupons?
How will we link our fans to products?
How will we be able to continue spamming selling to our customers?
Facebook Reach is a touchy subject among many, and it appears that it’ll be getting worse. We have a separate post planned to explain why you shouldn’t complain about Facebook Reach, but in the meantime, we have good news…
Nothing Changes With This Facebook Update
If you were frequently writing overly promotional, non-interesting updates, you were probably already seeing little reach and/or engagement. Hopefully, if you had a great offer or product push that you posted, you were promoting it with Facebook Ads to your fans. These things will remain the same come January.
Facebook Reach isn’t ever going to go up. Why? Because everyone and their grandma is making a Facebook Page for their project; more updates by more Pages means less real estate on the News Feed, plain and simple. You might think you want to see every update by that band you saw one time 3 years ago, but you really don’t. And if you really did, you can set that up on Facebook.
How Will Facebook Know?
This part is still unclear. I assume that the algorithm will look for key phrases and words in the status to determine whether or not it’s spammy. Here are the words directly from the Facebook newsroom:
According to people we surveyed, there are some consistent traits that make organic posts feel too promotional:
- Posts that solely push people to buy a product or install an app
- Posts that push people to enter promotions and sweepstakes with no real context
- Posts that reuse the exact same content from ads
They go on to offer examples of a promotional post…
What they’re trying to say is….leave the ads as ads, keep the Facebook Page posts engaging and interesting.
Less Interruption Marketing, More Content Marketing
This update is good for us. It forces less-savvy marketers to move away from interruption marketing, and move towards less interrupting content marketing. Here’s an example of what we mean:
Exhibit A:
Buy our handmade hair nets today: http://www.cafeterialadywear.com/hairnets
Exhibit B:
We take pride in our custom-made hair nets. Read more about everything we consider when constructing the ideal hair net….Things You (Probably) Didn’t Know About Modern Hair Nets http://www.cafeterialadywear.com/blog/hairnets-facts
Assume you’re a cafeteria lady who wasn’t thinking about upgrading your headwear….which link would you most likely click on?
Now, it’s safe to assume we still haven’t convinced you to chalk up the money to upgrade your hair net. We got you thinking though. At the very least, you now know about us and the fact that we put a lot of thought into our hair nets.
Bonus:
- Maybe you gave us your email because you wanted to hear more or wanted a discount
- Good chance you got cookie-d, so we hope you enjoy our re-targeting campaigns
- You might have followed us on social media (if you didn’t already)
- You’re now more likely to click on another of our links
To summarize, both examples of Facebook statuses are forms of interruption marketing. Exhibit B is much less interrupting though because it is useful information. You might not be ready to buy, but you still want to know more about hair nets. This latest Facebook update will force marketers to do more of B than A.
Things You Should Always Do When Posting Promotions
The reason that nothing has changed, in our opinion, is because the things you should be doing on Facebook now are the things you should have been doing before.
- Post interesting content
- Promote less-interesting, promotional content to fans
- Promote less-interesting, promotional content to targeted non-fans
What do you think of the latest Facebook announcement?