Facebook decided to replace its premium advertising program Reach Generator with more accessible Promoted Posts! Plus it´s being tested for personal profiles...
As you might have already heard, Facebook ended the Reach Generator program, which was introduced in February for larger clients. They could pay Facebook on an ongoing basis to sponsor their page posts and guarantee a 75% reach to the page’s fans. Sounds promising, right? But the program was probably too expensive and brands wanted to have more control over their budget, content and audience.
It seems that Facebook is putting all its eggs into the Promoted Posts basket. Not only does it appear that they have canceled the 100 thousand fan limit and made the feature available to bigger Pages, they are also testing Promoted Posts for users! Facebook users in the U.S. with fewer than 5 thousand friends and subscribers have the option to pay a fixed price of $7 to get their posts higher in the News Feed ranking and to make sure that more of their friends and subscribers see it. Why you would do that? According to Facebook, it´s meant for bigger news like announcements of engagement, the birth of your children, apartment offers, garage sales, etc.
This implies that News Feeds are becoming so crowded, that many posts go unnoticed and fall to the bottom under the weight of other content. Which is why brands are advised to choose quality over quantity and try posting less for more engagement. But personal profiles get no recommendations whatsoever and post as often as they feel they have something to share with their friends. Will these users, relying on the fact that the networking service is for free, get used to the notion that they need to pay money to make their posts visible?
When you promote a post, you can see how many more of your friends noticed it. The picture below shows how many times you boosted your reach compared to regular (non-promoted) posts.
If you’re considering promoting a post, our CEO, Jan Rezab, suggests that you wait an hour to promote it, that way you can see how it goes without promotion, get the most out of its natural ‘Edgerank’ (more on that later) and then give it a boost. You should also only promote your best content in addition to the content you most want your fans to see.
To learn more about promoted posts, check out the following articles:
Promoted Posts For Non-Fans And More New Facebook Features
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