Despite complaints about page reach, Facebook is one of the best online promotional tools for brands (including labels and artists). Many of these brands have paid for ads over the years to increase their fan base.Now, they may have to pay more: effective 2015, Facebook will be reducing the amount of “overly promotional” posts from Pages in newsfeeds. Posts that aren’t paid ads will become less visible if they meet the following criteria:
- “Posts that solely push people to buy a product or install an app
- Posts that push people to enter promotions and sweepstakes with no real context
- Posts that reuse the exact same content from ads”
Basically, if you’re going to advertise anything, Facebook wants you to pay for it.
Facebook says they’re doing this because surveyed users say many ‘organic’ posts in their feed are too promotional. Here’s a thought: unlike a page if you don’t want to read about their products.
Another relevant policy went into effect on November 5th. Pages can no longer offer incentives in exchange for Page or post likes.
Nina Ulloa covers breaking news, tech, and more. Follow her on Twitter: @nine_u
This could actually be a good thing.
Paying Facebook every time you reach out to your fans?
Why would you even consider that? It’s free on Twitter.
And spam is not a problem — just follow Nina’s advice: “unlike a page if you don’t want to read about their products”
No, I will not be sponsoring my posts. I manage a fast growing Facebook page with over 300k fans that averages a 10-20% engagement rate. I’ve never paid to get fans and I rarely sponsor posts (maybe once or twice a year).
Twitter is free but it sucks at driving traffic. It’s nowhere near Facebook.
Many companies are clueless about how to use Facebook on a deeper level (brand awareness vs hard selling) and people are tired of seeing their lame posts asking people to buy stuff. So yeah, I think this new policy could be good for Facebook as a community.
Red Bull is a great example of a company that knows how to use Facebook. They use great content to build brand awareness which indirectly leads to sales. Hard selling is an old school mentality and will become increasingly ineffective, with or without Facebook’s new policy.
“Twitter is free but it sucks at driving traffic”
That’s completely false, and it drives the traffic straight to iTunes and YouTube where you need it.
“Hard selling is an old school mentality”
No it’s not, it’s the way to make money — and you need to make money if you want to make music. Fame is literally worthless if you can’t translate it into cash. And that’s the exact problem many face today.
And don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe in spamming; spamming just pisses people off, but it’s so easy to include an iTunes link in a truly entertaining and relevant tweet.
That’s why a lot of extremely popular artists tweet several times a day and use Facebook once or twice a week.
I find the opposite true. I find that many are clueless how to fully utlize Twitter and for me, Twitter has driven a lot more traffic and sales than Facebook has ever done.
“That’s completely false, and it drives the traffic straight to iTunes and YouTube where you need it.”
Yes, it drives traffic, but not very much. There are numerous studies showing that Twitter drives nowhere near the traffic that Facebook does. This is common knowledge in the marketing community.
“No it’s not, it’s the way to make money — and you need to make money if you want to make music. Fame is literally worthless if you can’t translate it into cash. And that’s the exact problem many face today.”
The company I work for has been growing at a healthy rate for years and we’ve never relied on hard selling. We use high-quality content to build brand awareness and it’s worked great.
A lot of companies just suck at selling and push too hard. Consumers are different these days and want to have a relationship with the brands they follow. They want to benefit in some way before they fork over cash.
@Hoodgrown,
Maybe you’re not utilizing Facebook properly. I’ve been managing social media for entertainment companies since both Facebook and Twitter launched and I’ve never seen a client who generates more traffic with Twitter than with Facebook. The only exception is when they have significantly more Twitter followers than Facebook fans but if the numbers are close to equal, it’s not even close.
Check out this study: http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/social-referral-traffic-2014_b58664
One class action lawsuit please
“Posts that aren’t paid ads will become less visible”
Please delete this article, it clearly looks like you try to pursuade Facebook to rethink its strategy.
What if you succeed? Then it will take even longer for Facebook to go away.
Let the site self-destruct. Send the traffic to Twitter instead.
I want people to pay me for my music, but I don’t want to have to pay to use something somebody else created to enhance my career. I mean, all this shit on the Internet is free right?
Stop whining — Facebook makes enough money from content owners already.
Always remember this:
Services like Facebook and YouTube don’t own any content. They are dead if we remove our Intellectual Property.
what ads? please tell me where the ads are…i dont see any
I would rephrase that to “Facebook is making it harder for people with crappy content to reach fans.”
Facebook values its customers (i.e. every person who hangs out on Facebook). Without them they are nothing. If you’re content is creating a bad experience for their customers, and they can tell via their algorithm (look it up EdgeRank) or if there are complaint, you are going to get penalized by not getting your posts or ads shown.
Its no different then you playing in a club. If you are not drawing a crowd, not entertaining the crowd or worse, pissing off the crowd, the club owner isn’t inviting you back.
Solution, create content that people like, comment, share and click on.
I’d rather blame “The Internet”.
“Solution, create content that people like, comment, share and click on”
You clearly don’t know how Facebook works. Read this again: “Here’s a thought: unlike a page if you don’t want to read about their products”
That’s what people do, you know. No need for further ‘solutions’ (unless you’re born greedy and need to monetize everything that moves).
Hey, you should spend your time on songs instead of this. You can write.
I think Facebook is becoming less and less relevant for artists. After they took out the “Like for Free Dowload” and other social plugins, then this, Facebook is turning out to be just a simple and ugly webpage holder. You basically just have the right to create a simplistic webpage and post stuff no one will read unless you pay.
Might as well do it on your own website, and have all your news on an RSS feed.
Nah, Facebook is becoming less relevant for artists who make sh*tty music and/or don’t know how to build and maintain authentic relationships with fans. There are plenty of artists who are killing it on the platform.
“Facebook is becoming less relevant for artists who make sh*tty music”
Facebook is also becoming less relevant if you have young fans. You need Twitter, Instagram and YouTube to reach them, they don’t want Facebook anymore.
“Facebook is also becoming less relevant if you have young fans. You need Twitter, Instagram and YouTube to reach them, they don’t want Facebook anymore.”
Yes, younger fans are increasingly using other sites but Facebook is still a crucial platform for that demographic. It also drives the must traffic out of all the platforms. I use other platforms but I’m not leaving Facebook anytime soon. The page I run has over 300k fans and the majority of them are under 24
mmm… writing “non-shitty” music and building social relations on the internet are two entirely unrelated skills, you know ?
If you don’t want to pay Facebook to promote/advertise your stuff, then go create your own massive social network.
Good idea, but it’s already done, it’s called The Internet.
Good plan. We’re on it.
Check out our progress at:
http://www.thetribeapp.com
seeing as everyone just wants to delete and erase me, steal from me and basically treat me like im hitler himself or something i have an offer for everyone…
if anyone has a gun they would like to sell, while i cant guarantee i have the courage to pull the trigger, i will certainly give it my best shot… i get that no one wants me in this world anymore and since i cant reproduce or survive and there are no opportunities anywhere, i am trying my best to rid yall of my existence….
I have about a grand to my name and thats about all i can muster up as no one wants to pay me anything im owed, so thats about the only services of yalls i can spend money on! Then its just a matter of building the courage to blow my brains out and rid yall of me, which for some reason is really hiterlesque i guess, i dont know, i dont get this world…
Then yall can use the millions and millions raped from me to have a gigantic celebration that youve all finally gotten rid of me….
Thanks for your time.
Again, I really think you should use your writing skills on songs instead of blogs. Even the most boring tune attracts way more attention than fifty comments on DMN.
As for the money — we all get screwed from time to time. Here’s what I do:
Fuhgeddaboudit and start a new project.
This is a good thing! If you want to hear why, listen to my interview on CBC!
http://podcast.cbc.ca/mp3/podcasts/misenerontech_20141118_25315.mp3