Labs Blog

Dear FANS,

If you haven’t already heard, Facebook is now requiring business page owners to pay to have their status updates read by every subscriber. If we don’t, status updates only show up in less than 10% of newsfeeds, even though you have “liked” the page indicating you want to see posts from this page. However, there is a way aro

und it. Hover over
the button on the page where it says “Like” and then make sure you are check marked to “show in news feed”. It’s free! And, you won’t miss updates from this page. Do it to all of the pages you’ve “liked.” Support the small businesses. Please like and share with your friends.

Wells its true! Facebook is giving this option to admins of small pages!

But unfortunately people were too quick to jump on the bandwagon without looking at this awesome Facebook gift in more detail.1^st, let me break down the status update that has been going around and separate fact from fiction.

“Facebook is now requiring business page owners to pay to have their status updates read by every subscriber” – Although Facebook does not like brands interfering with the user experience of the page, brands are their main source of revenue. If they had to pay for every view of their status update, they would simply get off Facebook. Why would Facebook want to drive their main source of revenue away? Anyway, this 1^st piece of information is not true and this is because of the status’ next claim.

“status updates only show up in less than 10% of newsfeeds” – On average a brands status update is seen by 10% of fan base. This has been the standardised percentage that many brands, social media agencies, social media monitors have used to calculate their reach of an individual post. Once again, if Facebook was to make brands pay for every viewer of their updates, this would be impractical, the brands would leave Facebook and the company would lose its main source of income.

“even though you have “liked” the page indicating you want to see posts from this page” – Once again, liking a page does not mean that an individual will automatically receive every update of a brand. If this was the case, individuals newsfeeds would be constantly inundated with branded updates, creating a bad experience for individuals. This would either discourage individuals from using Facebook all together or they would not simply ‘like’ any brands. To sum this up – no fans for brands, no point of being on Facebook for brands, Facebook once again loses its main source of revenue.

“Like (the page) and then make sure you are check marked to “show in news feed” – When an individual likes a page, they show Facebook their intention to receive updates from that brand. This simply means that they want to show a brands updates in news feeds. This option is automatically selected for everyone that likes a page.

So in all the midst of small businesses (who own Facebook fan pages) being in an uproar about supposedly paying for every fan to see their updates, the logic behind this marvalous little button has been lost – let me tell you why.

Firstly, here are a few things to keep in mind

• Organically an brands update will be seen by roughly 10% of your Facebook fan base.
• Large brand pages have very limited access to this feature
• Facebook relies on brands for their revenue from purchasing ads

Yes this is another money making tool for Facebook….BUT for small businesses that can not afford large scale CPV/CPM buys on Facebook (like large brands and media agencies) this is a great tool to increase your visibility on fans newsfeeds. Further to this, with great content in your updates, this can increase your interactions, increase your edge rank and therefore have greater visibility over large brands!

Ultimately this little tool can:

• Increase a small business share-of-voice on Facebook over larger brands
• Through the right social strategy this means that the brand has more ‘light-weight’ interactions with more fans
• This will ultimately place the brand higher in the consideration sets of an individual.