Facebook Admits “Pay to Play” - Should You?

Last week, an article in Adage confirmed what Facebook marketers had suspected all along – Facebook is throttling the reach your Facebook Page updates get, in order to encourage page admins to pay for Facebook ads.

In fact, documents received by Adage imply that the reason to maintain a Facebook page is to make for more effective paid advertising. This is a huge shift.

Should You Pay for More Facebook Exposure – Or Move On?

It depends. Consider paying for Facebook ads:

• If Facebook is where your fans are and,
• You used to have great engagement that has slowed recently (it sounds likes can be expected to continue to slow) and,
• The engagement alone is worth the investment or,
• Your Facebook interactions and exposure results in leads or sales.

How can you know if Facebook is profitable for you? Check out our eBook on Online Marketing ROI.

Why We Won’t Shutter Our Page

While our Facebook page does give us some website traffic and some leads, at this point, it does not look like it is worth it for us to pay for more Facebook exposure, so we’ll continue to see our reach and engagement decrease. With that in mind, we won’t be posting as often as we used to, and have absolutely adjusted our expectations (that happened months ago).

However, Facebook is still a huge platform and customers, prospects and business acquaintances EXPECT us to be there, so we’ll stay. It is also one of the prime ways we interact with other marketing agencies – and those relationships are worth maintaining!

Even for businesses that do not specialize in online marketing should consider maintaining their Facebook page despite dismal exposure and engagement. It builds trust, and not being there may detract from your credibility. Though your updates will not show up in newsfeeds often, you will still be discovered in searches.

What We’ll Tell Our Customers About Facebook “Pay to Play”

If Facebook is a good platform for you, consider paying to promote your updates. It just makes sense. There is not point in boycotting the platform as a protest if it’s going to hurt your business. As a business itself, Facebook needs to pay the bills, and it’s their right to change the rules whenever they like.

This is another reason you need to maintain your own website and diversify to other platforms. If you were dependent solely on Facebook for online marketing, you are really left without a choice now. You’ll need to pay for Facebook exposure for now, even if you start diversifying.

That said, do diversify! Consider other platforms such as Twitter, Google Plus, Pinterest, YouTube and others that might make sense to your business.

Continue reading here: Email Campaigns - How to Increase Open Rate and Click-Throughs

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