Leaked Facebook Document Reveals Free Marketing Will Soon Be Thing Of The Past
An internal Facebook memo points to a future where the distribution of unpaid posts on the social network "decline over time" in favor of messages from advertisers. Several music marketers tell Hypebot that, over the last year, the reach of their posts on Facebook has gradually grown smaller, no mater how big their artist's audience is.
Since Facebook still has the traffic, it's tempting and partially correct to blame increased competition. Everyone is marketing on Facebook making it more likely that users will tune out. Then there's Facebook's admitted
constant reconfiguring of it's algorithms.
But what now appears to really be driving the decline is Facebook's desire monetize traffic. In a three page document titled "Generating Business Results On Facebook," obtained by AdAge, the social network freely admits, "We expect organic distribution of an individual page's posts to gradually decline over time as we continually work to make sure people have a meaningful experience on the site." That's followed by a pitch to spend money on ads and paid post distribution "to maximize delivery of your message in news feed."
Facebook On Fan Aquistion: Get Out Your Checkbook
The document also tells marketers to rethink how they view fan acquisition. The new pitch is that it's a tool for making paid advertising more effective. In other words, according to AdAge, "the main reason to acquire fans isn't to build a free distribution channel for content; it's to make future Facebook ads work better."
"Your brand can fully benefit from having fans when most of your ads show social context, which increases advertising effectiveness and efficiency," says Facebook.
What Does This New Age Mean For Indie Artists? Listen below.
Well right there at the end is where the problem for the artists arises. We are just now at the forefront of figuring out who and what is a fan on social media and as well what does it mean when an artists has fanbots and which inflate the metrics in one field and crush them when it’s time to consumerize their music to fans.
Fake fans are going to hurt you in more than a few ways. Since there are already companies offering this services and you’ll get caught. Those 10 or 10k fans which aren’t yours will get you burned by the analytics and sales in the end. And two like so many digital companies they only want you for another reason then your music.
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We noticed the noise issue getting out of hand 18 months ago; now it’s almost unbearable as a brand owner to publish and see any demonstrable engagement. Shameless plug aside, we’re trying at Fliptu to help brands better organize, present & promote their social media presence through social aggregation & curation. It’s the next frontier in social media; first was establishing a presence, then management & monitoring tools, and now we’re in the aggregation/filtering/curation phase to make sense of it all.
This is exactly why artists should still be embracing email and snail mail. Being able to control your data base of fans is so important. If a third-party controls your message then you will eventually have no message.
As Google works towards boosting organic linking and promotion – Facebook decides to go the opposite way. I current run Facebook pages for small businesses and this is just a bigger roadblock. It is already hard to promote a good ROI for FB pages for small businesses – and now they decide to make it even harder. The small companies I work for won’t pay per post to boost the seen rate because it just isn’t in their budget. Engagement is already hard when your target audience isn’t the main social network user. Stop being greedy and support all businesses.
Not too sure Facebook is worth it for anyone who has to nickle and dime their marketing budget. And even if I had a billion dollar budget I would just spend it on tv and radio which will organically make its way back to Facebook. Ppl hardly talk about things discovered on Facebook unless they also see it on television anyway.