Posts Tagged ‘Facebook page’

Facebook Changing the Rules – Again

Posted: September 9, 2013 in Social Media
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Facebook recently announced two new changes, one that completely flips past regulations on its head. First of all, Facebook now gets to determine what is and is not quality content. Basically, Facebook will review your business’ content and then decide when and how often your fans get to see your content. The other has to do with Facebook promotions.

Facebook Rating Factors

Let’s discuss the new content quality update. Facebook has created a string of rating factors to determine if content is truly quality. These factors include:

  • Is it a meme or other type of low-quality post (if so, your fans may not see it)?
  • Is it shareable?
  • Is the source trustworthy?
  • Is the content recent and relevant?
  • Is it interesting, or would you complain to get it removed?

This update is a bit troubling. Sure, Facebook wants to show its fans posts that they want to see. But should Facebook really be the judge of what your fans do and don’t see? It seems a bit arbitrary. What is quality content to one person may not be to another.

Contests Get the Go Ahead

The second update seems almost out of left-field for Facebook. The social network has changed its long-standing rules of not allowing promotions in the News Feed. Up until recently, you had to use a Facebook application to run a contest, giveaway or sweepstakes.

Now, Facebook has reversed itself.  Businesses can now run any type of promotion or giveaway right from their Page. This is good news for organizations, but bad news for the business of creating Facebook contest apps. I’m actually OK with this update. As a social media professional, I’ve always had to wait for developers to create the apps, which often cause campaign delays. On the other hand, Facebook app developers might not be so happy with this.

What do you think of these latest updates? Good news or bad news?

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Facebook: To Create or Not Create a Facebook Page

Posted: August 29, 2013 in Social Media
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My business clients always want to know whether they should create a Facebook page. They’ve all heard the success that brands like Coca Cola, Marketo or Nike have had with it, and they think that they immediately have to jump on the bandwagon. If you’re in the B2C market, then by all means create a Facebook page. With over a billion people using the site, Facebook offers a huge potential for you to sell your products or services.

Creating a Facebook Page in the B2C Market

The question gets a little trickier if you’re in the B2B space. Why? Well, the businesses using Facebook tend to be doing the same thing you are: They’re setting up a page in the hopes of attracting potential customers. What they’re generally not doing is using Facebook to find other businesses. Sure, people who work for your potential customers are using Facebook, but they’re probably not thinking about business. These people are probably using Facebook for their own personal, private uses. Even with Facebook trying to become a search engine with its new Graph Search, most people and businesses are not searching Facebook to find products and services.

The other problem with Facebook is that it takes a lot of work to get noticed. You can’t just set up a Facebook page and hope that people will just find it. You have to create good, quality posts, and you have to promote it via every avenue available to you: email, newsletters, events, other social networks, TV, etc. And once you get a following, you have to keep it.

I’ve heard many people say that they created a Facebook page, but they haven’t seen any leads or traffic from it. Then I go to their page, and there’s hardly any updates or the updates are all self-promotional. You have to create a mix of self-promotion and other items like videos, sharing other people’s stories, photos and the like. But more importantly, you have to keep it updated.

Small Businesses and Facebook

Small businesses are usually the ones most likely to want to create a Facebook page since they’re trying to use every avenue available to them drive traffic to their business. And Facebook is for the most part free. But you need to think about social media strategically. Is your target audience really using Facebook? With all the other social networks available, is this really a place where you want to dedicate resources? Do you have the resources to run multiple social networks, especially if Google doesn’t like to see dead social accounts?

If you are a business and want to try Facebook, I suggest trying to gain more exposure with it via Facebook ads. Facebook ads are relatively inexpensive, but the ROI for many clients has been huge. Try a couple of different ads promoting a special offer, product, etc., and see what it does for you. If neither a Facebook page nor ads work for you, don’t be afraid to pull the plug, and shut down your page. It’s worse to have a dead page on Facebook than none at all.