On the heels of Facebook’s IPO bust, they launched a feature that now allows you to promote your Facebook posts so that more of your fans will see it. (Your page must have at least 400 Likes.)
All promoted posts will show up as a “Sponsored Listing” in your fan’s feeds.
Statistics have already proven that Facebook users generally ignore ads, and GM recently pulled their campaign due to poor performance.
Granted, this is a little different than a regular ad because the post will be showed to people who already “Like” your page, but anytime the word “Sponsored” is used, it has a promotional feel to it.
So I don’t know about you, but this announcement didn’t make me do any happy dances. 😉
Why Use It?
If you have a Facebook page, you’ve probably already noticed a limited percentage of your fans actually see your posts. In fact, Facebook admitted that brand page content is only viewed by 16% of your fans on average.
This is due to many reasons – users not logged in when you post, they get lost in the shuffle of other posts and pages people “Like”, etc.
And of course, the skeptic in me can’t help but wonder if they are now ensuring your posts are shown to a limited number of people to encourage more ad spend.
Let’s face it. At the end of the day, it’s about making money – anything to help their ailing stock, right?
According to FB, not only will this feature ensure more post visibility by giving it a sponsored label, but when your fans interact with the promoted post, it will be shown to their friends as well.
Is it Worth It?
Post promotion has its place, but I wouldn’t just haphazardly use it without a solid plan.
Say you’re having a huge promotion or contest for UK residents only. Since you can target the post, you may consider testing it out for something like this because you can reach more relevant people.
You also have to consider the fundamentals of marketing. More views is not necessarily better if you struggle with fan interaction and engagement to begin with. Just like pay-per-click marketing or any kind of paid advertising, your content needs to convert for the campaign to be successful.
So if your paid Facebook post gives you 50% more views, but your engagement (likes, comments or whatever you’re measuring) shows minimal results, technically that campaign was a failure.
So I wouldn’t throw any dollars into any advertising until you have a real plan in mind and understand that the basic rules of marketing and engagement still apply.
So tell me. Would you ever pay to promote your posts on Facebook? Have you tried it yet? What are your thoughts about this in general? I’d love to hear from those who’ve tried it.
Today, my promote button went from $5 or $10 to a minimum of $10 or $20. I did not just go over a certain threshold of users – we only have about 625 fans. I think because I’ve actually been using the promote feature, sparingly, that they randomly chose me to test and see if I’ll take the bait. Even though I’ve been promoting, my reach has actually dwindled since I first started using promote. I’m pretty fed up with FB – wish there was another avenue! Maybe we’ll ramp up our twitter presence – although it’s a more limited market. Any ideas are welcome!!
Hi Lisa,
I’ve been seeing that “Promote your post” link, but wasn’t sure what it was all about. Of course that’s why I come to your blog. 🙂 I don’t think I’ll ever use the feature. Facebook and especially Facebook ads/promotion/etc. haven’t been a big priority for me and I just keep hearing more and more stories about people who have very little luck with Facebook advertising.
I could see this being a positive asset for some and a negative for others. It’s all about how you use it, however I’m not sure I would ‘rely’ on it as a means to get more views, etc.
you are right but i believe facebook went far with one.i mean when we already spend money to get fans all our posts should be shown to them without paying anything
I guess the worst thing is that they are trying to charge you to communicate with your existing fans
your photo is funny to me ($10.00), this just popped up on my page today, and I think due to the number of fans I have facebook is trying to charge me $200.00 to promote my post, my first reaction is are these people crazy… Definitely BUST.
I always struggle with social networks, mainly due to my selfishness and constant syndication of my content. Im looking to delve more into social network marketing, this seems to be yet another tool to help busineses create awareness
I’m going to give Facebook more of a try, trying to build up a fanbase for my new site at the moment. When I get to 400 followers maybe I’ll give this a go.
I’ve tried to advertise on facebook, but its impact is not very significant. advertise on google adwords is much better than on facebook. but that’s just my opinion, hehe…
Facebook is an excellent platform to create publicity and to reach people, when it is used in a right way. not all the content we post on the Facebook page gets attention.
My opinion about paying to promote our content is one should get to know everything about this before getting into it.
We can promote all our blog content without paying if it is planned in a proper way.
Thank you for your solid information and insights about FB’s Promote option. Where FB gave barest amount of info, you let your readers know the deal.
I used Facebooks Ads not so good as google is the best
I always interest how to promote my facebook fan page, but although I invite all of my friend list, the result is not make me satisfied. And now I can not invite any friend again to like my facebook page, althought I have new friend added. Am I limited by facebook? or mark as spam?
🙁
Can anyone answer why i can promote on my pages with under 100k fans but not on ones with over 100k fans? i can see that the cost goes up with the size of the page and the extended reach opportunity, but i can’t understand why that would limit people to promoting post to large communities. Can anyone promote a post to their page with over 100k fans? does anyone know if this feature is in roll-out and just not available to this segment yet. thanks ; )
What I dislike extremely about this new feature is that the posts now that I do not promote have gone down in the number of people who do see it compared to before the switch. I guess I will now be spending $5 per post to reach all of my already existing customers who used to see and respond to my posts regularly. It makes me want to turn my personal page into my business page so that I can post freely without getting charged. What’s the point of having a business page now if you have to pay to use it?
It really does change the game when companies get greedy doesn’t it? And I don’t think it’s a coincidence at all that this whole thing launched on the heels of the IPO. Facebook knows that the value of their stock depends on how well they can generate advertising dollars. It’s a shame we have to pay the price for this as facebook page owners.
I have advertised my Facebook and now i have 50k likes on Facebook.
now the tests are over and the system has gone gone worldwide, very disappointed. i run facebook page with over 30K of followers, if I use the promote function, I get 10% more reach, all fine and good a few more likes of the post it self maybe not very significant amount all told, but if you look deeper I do not not gain new page likes actual I get a large increase i un-likes for my page. So why should i pay to prompt my post, I cant think of a reason, unless facebook actually promotes to Followers how actually like to see my post Ie. like the fist 10 to 15% who do for free anyway, why pay for more and shoot your self in the foot and loose followers of your page.
never going to use again unless there is a significant change. if i post very regularly I can get the same reach with out the negative affect of a sponsored post. What are facebook thinking.
I just noticed this feature a few days ago. I am considering whether should I use it or not? After reading your writing, I decided not to use it because I think facebook ads would be more appropriate to promote your site.
Great post lisa, I have personally tried advertising on facebook before and totally agree with the guys over at wordsmith & seomoz in the fact that facebook can be very hard to advertise on compared to some of it’s rivals such as adwords.
This new form of advertising does look interesting and i will probably try it out but I still don’t feel confident about the potential results.
Hi lisa, Facebook is sharing ,publishing and advertising website.Facebook is an effective platform if used appropriately, as is the paid post idea – and I completely agree with you that this strategy shouldn’t be used for every post. in addition, more views aren’t necessarily representative of more engagement.
Hi Lisa,
I’ve heard about this new plugin but I thought it is a free plugin. In this case there is no difference between facebook ad and these payed posts. In this case I think ads are much better choice, since they bring new followers, who may leave at some moment but also can stay. Of course, I know that post views statistics are not so great. Still, if someone really likes your page, he will check out the page from time to time to find out what’s new. If not, those payed posts can’t help. In fact, I really think that this can only result in people leaving from your page, since it would be like posting updates every five minutes. Plus, it will probably be the one same post, which is even worse.
So far, I just use twitter feed to link my post to face book.
I can definitely see a significant decrease in views on every post, I can even see how I now do not receive page post of some of the pages I am a fan of. I check the status frequently but have not seen many previous page posts and actually have to head over to the actual brand page to check what’s been happening… not impressed!
I think its a great initiative of facebook. It is true that facebook users ignores ads. So, to promote products by our post this is the great way i think so.
It might be effective Lisa. I do not have enough likes yet but I would try it.
Me? Prise open my wallet? To spend on promoting a post on Facebook that hardly anyone will take notice of? No thank you.
I’m sure it might be a good idea if you have hundreds of thousands of people who ‘liked’ your page but I don’t think it will be of any use to the majority of us. 🙂
Is Facebook becoming this desperate? Attracting 1,000 likes on Facebook is hard enough, Facebook cleverly ensuring you reach only a fraction of your fans is daytime robbery.
Hey Lisa, it is apparently the necessary evil! I tried it out but stopped after about a day cause I was not satisfied with results. It will take a lot of testing (and money) to figure out which posts to promote and get good ROI.
Interesting! So did you get the views that were promised by Facebook when you selected the appropriate dollar amount?
Its a useless feature, and they have stopped showing fan page posts on news feed encouraging more people to spend money on promote post. Thanks that you’ve shared.
Cool possible option with Facebook ads, but maybe as risky as adwords
Great info on this! I am very frustrated with FB and feel that most of what they are doing is just benefiting them. I will not be paying for this. As you said,it’s something we should be getting already! And I find that pop up irritating too! I’m so glad you talked about this.
The old FB ads didn’t work well, so does this feature.
I have used it on some of my posts. The number of views does increase, but it isn’t worth your money since the engagement is rather low. Focus on creating a community on your page is far more profitable 🙂 For example, you could use your money to make a giveaway where people come and refer their friends to your page.
Got any advice on how to gain 400 likes for your Facebook page?
Link your FB page from all the pages on your site. Encourage people to visit by holding a contest or asking a question and sending them to your FB page to reply.
Nice, thanx for tips, i will do it.. I have question Lisa, is facebook groups help us to gain FB page like too?
I signed up with a service called Social Advertising. I don’t know how it works, but I went from around 70 fans to 400+ in a matter of 2 days. That was right around the same time the Promote feature rolled out though so it didn’t do much good. Out of 403 fans right now, I’m reaching a whole 23 of them.
they are trying to make money in every way to gain back the lost money on stocks lol. its a useless feature , and they have stopped showing fan page posts on news feed encouraging more people to spend money on promote post.
Though, I have not tried promoting my post on facebook, I almost did so last week! But, I was skeptical about the whole thing. If actually it worth the money and if it will yield result. Thank God you posted this. At least I now know I am not the only one with this thought.
Facebook still needs to master a few things in the ads fray – Adwords makes sense- nonetheless publishers can still make the most of what the social networking giant has to offer – I agree with you Lisa the announcement spells good prospects for means of harnessing the power of FB to generate traffic! thanks again for the post
Hey we need some net neutrality up on Facebook.
So there will be two tiers of Facebook posters -those that can and are willing to pony up to reach those “extra” subscribers, edging the rest of us out of the newsfeed, and the rest of the schlubs such as myself who won’t cough up for the feature.
Of course, I don’t have 400 fans yet, so it’s a moot point. I suspect the reasons for this have to do with my incessant postings of my dislike for vegetables. They are DISGUSTING.
But I don’t know if this sort of thing is relevant to this particular discussion.
Facebook hasn’t done much to keep me excited these days, and alas, this doesn’t do it either.
Anyway, I would probably try this out of sheer curiosity to see what benefits, if any, were yielded.
Ha ha! You and your vegetables, John! Yes this seems to be the consensus thus far (with Facebook, not your vegetable eating. lol)
Hi Lisa,
I just noticed this “Promoted Post” thing today and I’m feeling the same weirdness – why exactly do I want to pay for what should already be happening in the first place?
I can see where this type of promotion might be useful, but not for just any old every-day post.
Hi Kiesha!
Even though I’m leaning toward a big thumbs down on the whole feature, I may toy with it to see what kind of engagement I get.
Lisa your guess is as good as mine with that “… wonder if they are now ensuring your posts are shown to a limited number of people to encourage more ad spend.” because since May 30 when FB launched the post promotion thing, I’ve received at least 10 complaints from my fans telling me they did not see my post of the day in their newsfeed and only saw it when they came to my page to find out what’s going on.
I have not used it yet but I will use it in the future for “very special” posts 😉 because I have seen that the promoted posts occupy a large amount of real estate in my newsfeed when my friends like/interact with a page that is running a post promotion so they are more visible than normal FB ads in the right column and I guess they will convert better if well done.
Hey Flo! Yeah they have definitely been manipulating things. I’ve noticed a lower percentage of views and I don’t think the timing is a coincidence.
Hey Lisa,
On the one hand, I love Facebook and use it often for sharing news, comments and photos with family and friends. On the other hand, when I click on an ad or a link of an unknown origin, I’d rather not be logged in – who knows what kind of rights either Facebook or I can grant them by mistake. This is why I like to keep these things separate and perhaps other users think alike.
Moreover, since your position agrees with other expert opinions and my hunch, and since I experienced extremely low returns with their free $100 advertising, I’ll stay away from using it at least for a while.
I would never pay to promote my Facebook page posts until I see that others are benefiting from it.
I agree with you totally….and now I have seen someone get 12k likes in 3 weeks and 3k subscribes to his newsletter.Shouldn’t this be enough reason for a paid campaign?
Some stock analyst said that FB adv is not too effective to bring a nice converts, this situation brings unbalanced by increased FB’s user so that this condition makes an unattractive to investors in capital markets and makes them thinking twice to buy FB from stock market.
nice post Lisa
Facebook is an effective platform if used appropriately, as is the paid post idea – and I completely agree with you that this strategy shouldn’t be used for every post. in addition, more views aren’t necessarily representative of more engagement.
there is legislation on the table that would mandate retailers/businesses from disclosing the incentive provided to people for likes/etc/essentially any incentive to buy credibility. if it gets passed, it may trickle to internet marketers at some point similar to the FTC guidelines.
going back to Facebook…..
have you found that you can automated your Facebook page management and user engagement, or do you find that you have to constantly spend time on it to keep it thriving???
Welcome back
Hey Sunil,
I honestly don’t automate much. I just try to post comments that will spark discussions (questions, etc.) and I’ve noticed those kinds of posts go a long way and I really don’t post often – maybe 4-8 times per week, but I definitely get the best engagement from FB out of all the social media sites.
Hey Lisa,
I was about to just say ‘interesting & thanks for sharing” (which I’ll say anyway) but picked up from one of the comments that you actually have to pay to use this feature???
Pay to have your posts seen by people who already liked your page so should be seeing them anyway if it wasn’t for Facebook changing the algorithm and hiding things?
What a con.
I was already getting turned off facebook big time and this, if I understand correctly is another example which is making me think seriously about leaving Facebook altogether.
They are just trying to monetize everything – and not in very smart ways either if you ask me. They treat their user-base (who after all created their success) very very badly in my view.
Lisa how can blogger’s take maximum benefit from this facebook feature. I am new to this field and want to know more about it.
I’m not sure that I will ever really use this feature. While having more views from my base on Facebook is nice, I really want them on my site at the end of things.
The Facebook stuff is just a way to get them acquainted with my brand, my site, etc. The site is where the real action is. I might be overlooking an opportunity here, but I’m not seeing a lot of real benefit for the investment.
Would I pay to promote my site on Facebook? Possibly… Will I be paying to promote Facebook posts on Facebook? Not likely.
That’s how I see it too, Jon. However, I could see one using it to promote a contest that is on their site. That way you’re promoting your post that ultimately links to your website. I just have a bigger problem with the fact we are essentially having to pay for what you would think we’d be getting anyway. I understand that not everyone will view every post but 15% for the average is very dismal.
exactly, seems FB dictate which status updates we see in our time line, why? If I’m friends with someone I want to see their updates, if I like a page I want to see their updates. Who are they to pick and chose what I see??
FB should include stats on how many people see just regular user status updates. Bet it’s significantly higher than 16%, so why are Page status update viewing stats so low?
First, sorry for my bad english…
Second…
In my country was politic ellection two week ago…
Political campaign was very strong on FB.
But, here is a twist! They spend alot less money on campaign then many company…
Vierd stuff is that political party pay fans about 10 euro cents per 10 post linked to their pages *web or FB, and so on…).
So ordinary FB users are bloated and flooded with political contest of post of their friends…
With less money they succes to 70% people get to ellections…
So… I think that this is much better and cheeper than payd FB posts…
Total wate of time and be crazy to spend this money. I’ve seen the prices they are charging, robbery. There is a chance that, if your posts start staying at the top of your fans status they will get peed of by over promotion and just unlike you.
The other thing that just feels weird is we are paying for our ad to be seen by people you would think should be seeing it anyway since they already “Liked” our page. Sure, I understand how it’s impossible for EVERYONE to see your posts, but something about that just seems a little strange.
But here’s the kicker, this has been slowly in the pipeline since 2010, very very clever. I have been reading and researching many blogs about this, very interesting points around, most people not happy.
It’s brutal. For around a couple of years now, if you have set up a fan page, FB have been cleverly holding back how much of your status reaches your audience.
An how this works now is, as you may have noticed, you can now (coincidentally) see your stats, who sees you, how much of your audience you reach and so on.
So, FB, now has an option, you can pay from 100-500 dollars and FB will “help'” you reach your full audience by making sure your posts you post, stay on the top of your fans pages, very clever.
Now, this is disgusting, when people like your fan page they should always get your status but as we all know, they are an advertising company period, and can do what they want.
Exactly…. and now when you post something that annoying pop up keeps reminding you that most of your fans won’t see your post. It just seems a little desperate on FB’s part.
Yes,I think it will do more damage than good to the company, there are plenty of other ways of free business promotions that can be used.Will have to wait and see, interesting.
It is not 100-500 dollars. It can be a few bucks.
From Facebook : The best way to ensure that you reach a large portion of your audience with your page posts is to promote your page posts. Please let me know if you have any additional questions!
From Me: We already bought our 30,000 fans with our ads to like our page ,but now they are saying in order to reach the fans we paid for we need to promote . More money !! Pretty sick !
Interaction is key to getting the right amount of attention form facebook. I guess just trying it for a while and then evaluate the results that you get.
I think it is great and that it can not be as effective. Thanks for the article Lisa.
Right, I’ll gonna use this for my fan page!
Killer CTA is most important for this. no?
Hi Lisa. I only used Facebooks Ads for promoting products of one of my clients, and quite frankly, it did not convert as well as it was expected, although it increased slightly the conversions. Actually the same result could have been achieved without having to opt for paid ads. As for the “promote your post” feature, I sadly have not used it yet, so I am in no position to give any opinion just yet. What you say does make a lot of sense though and careful planning is key to making a successful campaign. Will definitely come back here for an update, should I ever use this medium for promotion. For now, it is not partt of my plan 🙂
Hey DiTesco
I’ve heard this a lot from other people regarding ads not converting. In fact, that’s why investors have been shy about the stock — they know how well Facebook does with ads is going to play a big role with how the stock performs. FB just can’t seem to master the ad game…. yet.
[I can hear Google laughing now.] LOL
Hi Lisa:
This is just a theory but would you say Facebook ads don’t convert well because the ads are based on the users profile (demographics) and not what they’re interested at the moment. Plus, people are going there to socialize, not shop.
Compare this to when people are actually searching for something, i.e. Sony 90px camera sale. They are looking for something specific at THAT MOMENT.
Which brings up a related question that would surely help affiliate marketers. Now that Google Adwords has cracked down on affiliate marketers, are there any paid advertising you recommend using? Maybe that would be a great post to write about:) Link to them with your affiliate link, give a little “How To Make Money With Paid Advertising” bonus for those that sign up through your affiliate link, and earn a little cash:)
Anyway, back to work. Thanks for sharing your 2 cents on paid advertising.
Charlie
I have also seen disappointing results with Facebook Ads, DiTesco. As for the promote your post, frankly, I don’t think it’s fair that Facebook determines “what your fans want to see” or “what your fans think is important.” personally, I won’t pay for my content to be seen. I do, however, take advantage of tricks and tactics that have been proven to increase your EdgeRank…such as using high quality images, keeping statuses either really short, or really long and insightful. As with any form of makreting or advertising for that matter, you must test test tes and see what’s bringing you the best results.