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Don’t for a second read this title as “the end of advertisement” on Facebook, as it is not the case. In the light of the new changes, Policy Basics and Data Policy new pages and upgrades announced recently, the news that the social network will put an end to the Facebook promotional posts was welcomed by everybody. What is a promotional post in the eyes of Facebook and why exactly should you not see it on your news feed?
First things first: the definition. By “promotional posts” Facebook understands
posts that solely push people to buy a product or install an app, push people to enter promotions and sweepstakes with no real context, (and) posts that reuse the exact same content from ads.
In other words, if Facebook sees some posts from some pages as being spammy, or too promotional, they will become less and less visible on our walls and news feeds. According to the company, the Facebook users complained more about the intrusiveness of these Facebook promotional posts than they complained about the ads, and Facebook, always ready and willing to improve users’ satisfaction, announced that the changes would roll out as soon as January 2015.
How about the businesses that base their online marketing strategies on promoted content? Some start-ups and small industries use the features of Facebook pages as free ads they probably can’t afford. What happens to them if their promoted content gets lost in the ether and never reaches the audience? Their option is, of course, to pay Facebook more ads space, or create more focused marketing campaigns.
If you are a regular individual using Facebook for cat pictures and chatting purposes, you will indeed benefit from a cleaner, clearer news feed, with a significantly diminished density of Facebook promotional posts from different brand. However, you can miss out some posts from pages and people you can actually like and follow, if Facebook considers some celebrities’ posts as being too promotional.
If you are a company and you use your brand Facebook page features, your stories will likely reach fewer and fewer targets, be your posts promotional or not. Of course, you can always pay Facebook money for adds, because these won’t go away any time soon.
The good news is that the Facebook ads density won’t increase, either, or this is what Facebook promised. The company also stated that even f these changes will take effect starting on January and that Facebook promotional posts will see their demise, the majority of Pages won’t be affected, so you will still receive your favorite media outlets’ news.
