What’s the deal with Promoted Posts on Facebook?
I’ve been getting this question a lot lately, and quite frankly it’s got me all tied up. And not in a good way. See I’m a BIG fan of Facebook – and I have defended the constant changing of their platform and policies over the last year.
I have listened to a lot of people complain and seen plenty leave their accounts behind in search of more consistent and seemingly ethical social media channels. These changes are a natural progression, but at warp speed because it’s grown so quickly and publicly. Facebook didn’t have the luxury of quietly tweaking and testing their business model. So when something doesn’t work, it REALLY doesn’t work.
The ‘Pros’ of being on Facebook massively outweigh the ‘Cons’, especially where it concerns your business. I passionately advocate that almost all businesses should have a Facebook presence and the sooner the better. If clients want to make a list of excuses for not blogging or tweeting – fine. I get it. It’s a lot of work, it’s hard to know if you’re reaching the right people or if/when you’ll see a return…etc. But there are no good excuses for not having a Facebook Page. It’s like a website. You need it to be relevant. If you disagree then let’s talk again in 3 years and see where your business is at.
Anyhoo…
The ‘deal’ with Promoted Posts is that they are supposed to be a way to share your Page posts with a wider audience than your current fan base. Similar to their Ad system, this is a method of expanding your reach. Most pages don’t go viral overnight [Except for anomalies like https://www.facebook.com/romneybindersfullofwomen which had over 75,000 Fans in the course of an hour during Tuesday's debate] which means that when you first set up shop you have a pretty small pool of people to speak to. And being a Fan is just an opt-in, not a guarantee that they will see what you post.
Before you complain, just remember that users Like hundreds of Pages. There’s no possible way that Facebook could show everyone everything they liked. There has to be a system to what/when people see and it has to be pretty complex. The system is called EdgeRank in case you want to look it up.
Back to Promoted Posts. It’s supposed to give you a leg up in the EdgeRank system so that more of your Fans see you + so do lots of other people. In theory, a strategically promoted post could send you viral…as I suspect the Binders Full of Women page was. It’s one more way for innovative thinkers to use this platform – but it’s not a necessity in order to be successful on Facebook.
Or so I thought.
Until recently, I had been meaning to test out Promoted Posts but never got around to it. Then all of a sudden my numbers took a nosedive. I watched it for a few weeks and did my best to continue business as usual. I thought maybe the analytics were off (which they are, but that’s another story) but THEN I started noticing a much more prominent push from Facebook to do a Promoted Post. As I started looking into this I found that many many many people were experiencing the same drop and I suspected that these were related. So I tested out a Promoted Post.
For a $5 fee I exceeded any numbers I had ever done organically and got new Fans to boot. But the drastic upswing in views comes from the drastic drop that happened ‘organically’ over the last few weeks. I don’t appreciate being forced into a Promoted Post and it’s not something that I, or many small businesses, can afford to do all the time.
And here’s what REALLY gets my goat. When I checked my analytics to see exactly who was engaging with this post, I found that the vast majority of users were nowhere near my ‘ideal’ target market.
So what’s going on here? We KNOW that Facebook knows everything about us, so why wouldn’t be able to target these posts, or at the very least, make our own Fans the priority. I have a sneaking suspicion that my post was outsourced to Taiwan, though I can’t really fathom what benefit that would have for Facebook.
I still heart Facebook, and I know they will get this sorted out – they have to because they rely on millions of users. You can only do things that don’t work for so long…in the meantime you’d better believe that I will be paying attention and doing more research. Because it matters – to my business, my clients and potential clients’ businesses.
Final Note: I DO recommend that you test out a Promoted Post for yourself. If your fan base is small it can help you hit those milestone numbers – even if they are not your market. I also want to hear about your experience and impressions, especially if it does not match up with mine.
