Facebook Pages Take Another Hit On Any Post That Seems Promotional

Do you frequently post great deals or links to hot products?  Or are you a restaurant posting daily specials that can seem too sales-y?  Facebook is yet again (and again) reducing the organic exposure of Facebook Pages’ posts that they deem too promotional.

Facebook says they are making the change because users are complaining about too much promotional posts in their news feed, yet Facebook can only directly control the promotional posts run through Facebook ads.  So as a compromise, they are cracking down on posts that are essentially ads but that Facebook isn’t running through their ad program.

There are three main types of posts that Facebook deems as promotional and will be hit by this change.

1. Posts that solely push people to buy a product or install an app
2. Posts that push people to enter promotions and sweepstakes with no real context
3. Posts that reuse the exact same content from ads

Here are two examples of Facebook posts that would no longer be shown as often as they are currently.

It is also a definite revenue grab for Facebook.  However, even though Facebook continues to reduce the organic exposure of posts from Facebook Pages – to the tune of a 50% reduction over the last year, their paid impressions have barely gone up over the past year.

Once those pages lose the visibility on those types of promotional posts, they are going to lose that revenue unless their ROI can still work while paying for Facebook ads instead.

The change won’t come into effect until January 2015, so those Pages that have their holiday marketing tied to their Facebook Page campaigns can breathe a sigh of relief.

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Jennifer Slegg

Founder & Editor at The SEM Post

Jennifer Slegg is a longtime speaker and expert in search engine marketing, working in the industry for almost 20 years. When she isn't sitting at her desk writing and working, she can be found grabbing a latte at her local Starbucks or planning her next trip to Disneyland. She regularly speaks at Pubcon, SMX, State of Search, Brighton SEO and more, and has been presenting at conferences for over a decade.

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