Oh, and their friends…..
Look, I get that our walls are getting really busy, you click “like” on any Facebook Fan Page, or link or whatever, and you’re going to see not only your friends updates on your profile wall, but updates from their pages, and other Pages you have liked. So the chances of your posts from your Fan or Business pages getting seen nowadays on your existing Fans (likers)Profile walls, has meant that many Page owners are forking out for Facebook Advertising to get more attention for their posts and their Page, and to expand their Fan Base through “likes”. Because of the massive increase of traffic we are all now getting on our walls, the previous way of getting more likes on your Facebook Page is also less likely, because of our wall traffic and our friends and friends of friends wall traffic, if you see what I mean.
So Facebook have just released in the last week or so, a new way to get attention for our Fan/Business Page posts.. Ta Da!! The Promoted Post. This is different from sponsored stories, or individual post advertising, these Page posts do not go out as Facebook ad’s they just appear (prominently?)on your existing fans/likers profile walls.
You may see (if its been activated for your account), at the bottom of each new post on your Facebook Page, you now have the option to promote this post for as little as $5 or up to $300. The catch is that this just promotes your post to your existing “likers” or Fans of your Page, of course if your Fan likes your post or shares it, you get the added bonus of their friends seeing it on their walls, the more you pay the more of your Fans get to see your post….(prominantly).
So I did an experiment with one of my posts today, signed up for a $5.00 promotion which will see 1000.00 handpicked…(not really) of my 2000 strong, lucky Fans get my promoted story in their timeline over the next 3 days….I don’t know who those 1000.00 will be. Are they the first ones that liked my Page? In alphabetical order? Random?…The fans that haven’t been paying my posts any attention? Not sure how they are picked. If you know, let me know in Comments.
Damn You Edge Rank!
So yes, now we really do know. Edgerank has led us to this. Not only do we need huge engagement on our Pages, lots of likes and great posts….but to circumvent Edge Rank we really have to pay to get seen. Who was it who said that Facebook would be charging users soon? This is it folks.
To use Promoted posts see pics below. Be warned once you use the promoted post offering, your next post will default to another promoted post. You can reverse this by clicking the little cog wheel and selecting Pause Promotion. You need to have your credit card or Paypal set up with Facebook to do this.
Promoted Posts
My promoted post looked like this after about 15 mins. See Below
Results of my promoted post
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About Leonie Smith
Leonie Smith is a small business computing consultant & Social Media strategist & designer of Social Media pages and backgrounds. Leonie is also "The Cyber Safety Lady" 
I also did an experiment with the new Promotion. Facebook also told me that they would get my post to 1,000 of my fans for $5.
In actuality when it ended this morning they only sent it to an extra 198 of my fans and charged me $4.89. So they are NOT doing what they said they would do! In the meantime I have about lots of fans that STILL have NOT seen my post! So much for getting what you pay for on Facebook!
Maggie recently posted..Top Camera Improves Your iPad Camera – … and the one on your iPhone too!
Maggie thanks for your comment, this could actually backfire for Facebook, 1. because even though most social media consultants knew that Page posts weren’t reaching all fans, this really points it out to all owners of pages. 2.If even when you pay you can’t reach all your fans, then this is very disappointing.
My promoted post has till this afternoon to mature, and so far its only reached less than half of the promised 1000. I’m wondering how they are doing this. Facebook are notorious for not explaining their algorithms, but if you mute a page as a profile, does that mean that if that Page pays to get to all their fans that it will by pass that mute? Note: muting does not mean unliking….just means you don’t want to see the updates in your news feed. If the stats don’t add up. People won’t pay. simple. And now they have advertised that they are filtering posts (which many of us knew anyway)
Thanks for this Leonie.
I always enjoy the show that is Facebook changes. So far I have promoted posts available on my personal profile but NOT my business profile. Meanwhile my stats are all over the place for my business page.
I’ll be very interested in seeing if the promotion actually DOES get to the 1000 promised. Does it say 1,000 or “up to” 1000. What if the number of fans you chose don’t log in for a few days.
If it bypasses the muting option people are going to be very frustrated on both sides. That would reflect badly on the business from the customers perspective IMO.
Have you seen how the posts show up in the feed?
Marama Carmichael recently posted..7 Key features of a Mobile Web Design
Thanks for the Comment Marama, out of 1000 promised only 600. And only 10% reached via the $5.00. Shrugs…doesn’t do what claimed,,
Leonie Smith recently posted..Protect Your Facebook Business Page With New Admin Role Abilities
ooo kay then.. I’ll do a test when my page gets it to check if it’s teething problems, but NOT a promising start! *shrug*
Marama Carmichael recently posted..7 Key features of a Mobile Web Design
I am just wondering if you had to pay the entire $5.00? We run a daily deal site and have been using promotions for the page but stop them when the deal ends, this is about every 24 hours. We only pay for the people reached. Here is an example
161 Paid Reach {People Reached}
$2.32 {Amount Spent}
Budget Spent
My Budget was $5 but we did not use the entire budget.
Hi all,
I had made a promoted post almost 20 hours ago. It reached only 1,876 people. But it only reached 169 members through promotion. I am wondering when the balance 831 will see it.
I am sure, facebook is gonna implement this on profiles too. Because I can feel it from the reach of my profile posts. When I had only 4K subscribers, I got over 100 likes for each posts I made. Now I have 22K+ subscribers, but I get only 50-60 likes for it. That means, facebook is limiting audience for profile posts also. I strongly doubt fb made this happen with an intention to monetize the profile updates too…