There has been lots of buzz about Facebooks new feature on Brand Pages to promote a post. In short Facebooks allows you to spend a set amount of money to boost your ranking in their algorithm and ensure your ad shows in more of your fans Facebooks Feeds. Most Business pages owners that I’ve talked to are outraged at having to pay to be seen on their own fans pages, most feel that if a person likes you page then they should automatically see your post. I completely agree with this however Facebook works a little different, even before Promote your post many of your Facebook fans have not being see your business post. Whether or not your post is seen depends on timing, the amount of that fans other feed activity, past interactions. It breaks down to these 3 questions that determine whether or not your fan sees you post
- timing- Is the fan online and viewing there feed around the time you post or someone that know shares?
- amount of that fans other feed activity- Does the fan have so many friends and other pages that your post are outweighed?
- past interactions- Has the fan engaged with your page (liked a post or commented) recently?
Depending on your answers to this questions determines if your fans actually see your post in their feed. But now Facebook is giving your the chance to break the rules for a fee of course. Now when you make a post on your Facebook your are given the option to promote post, for a fee you can choose how much your post will reach more of your fans. The campaign runs for 3 days and it work similar to a pay per impression add campaign, where you are charged as more people see your post.
So this week I took a spin and tried out this new feature, I created a post about our new Portfolio Promotion last week and promoted it for $5. So here are the results
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Here’s the original post, as you can see this one reached about 40%. This is much better than my usually 10-15% |
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Here’s the promotion page. As the campaign progressed on this page you could see how much money you have left and how many people you have reached with this campaign. |
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This shot gives a visual of how many fans saw the post blue are organic (meaning the would have seen the post without the promotion), pink are viral (these viewers saw the post because of a post on another fans page) and green are the paid post. As you can see almost double the other categories. |
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This is another visual of how many of your fans you’ve reached. The blue is your organic traffic, the green your paid traffic, and the white the % of unreached fans |
So whats the conclusion, it’s not worth it. Although promoting the post increased my viewed post almost 4 times my average views the engagement was still down, only 3 fans like the post and many of them are regular poster. I may try again with a different type of post, but definitely no more than $5 for such a promotion.
I really believe this is FaceBook’s way of ushering in fees for business pages. What are your thoughts? Have you promoted a post?
6 Response Comments
Just because you pay to promote something doesn't mean the engagement will go up. You still have to post something that connects with your readers – is it possible this update just missed the mark? While I found this interesting as I've not paid to promote anything yet, it seems pretty anecdotal. I'd be curious to see a study done on pages with a high number of likes, and perhaps a variety of different updates.
And to clarify – yes, I understand that this is your story on promoting a post, but you conclude " it’s not worth it" which is specifically what I'm getting at here.
Hi Angela thanks for stopping by and reading the post. I agree the type of content is critical to your level of engagement. Although an informative post would likely get more engagement most business will not pay to promote those type of post, they most likely will do what I did and promote a post about a product or promotion.
I still think its not a bonus to pay to promote to your own fans. The pay to promote feature would have been much more appealing if you were paying to promote on non-fans feeds, then it would give you a chance to be exposed to a new audience
Personally, I think FB is trying to make money back on a bad IPO…worst in 10 years… and what erks me is they are targeting small businesses, in my opinion…. ie… those with over 400 fans or less than 100000. That is small businesses ie those that are vulnerable to pay anything to increase sales and get going and those that need to do that kind of thing….and those that may not know what is happening. I think FB is a nice adjunct to businesss…. and since these changes, I don't put all my eggs there. Some people have written me saying they are not getting my posts… and wish they would…. so there you go. People are starting to notice… so I wonder what that will do for everyone as they discover what's happening. WHen I like a page, I want their stuff in my newsfeed.
It was interesting to see what happened to you. I appreciate your transparency as I was curious. It doesn't sound like it's a good things to do unless you are really sure or really campaigning something… then I still wonder. FOr me… it doesn't "feel" honest with FB… so you know.. I'm a bit nutty about those things… I like things to be honest and transparent, like you are here. I don't think FB is being straight up… and I hope they get it together, because I like FB and I want to use it… I hope they don't end up like a myspace…. ie no body uses it now!
That's exactly what I thought, Elizabeth. The timing of starting to charge for what was free is suspect. I don't mind paying for Facebook ads, but I wonder if this is the first drip in a waterfall to come. I really enjoy connecting on FB but they did promise to always be FREE as I recall.
Great research, Akilah!
That’s exactly what I thought, Elizabeth. The timing of starting to charge for what was free is suspect. I don’t mind paying for Facebook ads, but I wonder if this is the first drip in a waterfall to come. I really enjoy connecting on FB but they did promise to always be FREE as I recall.