Facebook is Cracking Down on Overly Promotional Posts

Earlier this year Facebook began rolling out a major update that has impacted all business pages. They are restricting the visibility of ‘overly promotional’ organic posts (ie not paid). Facebook’s goal with the News Feed has been to show people the things they want to see.

An ongoing survey Facebook is conducting revealed that people want to see more stories from friends and Pages they care about, and less promotional content which has had Facebook to change its algorithm to detect these overly promotional Page posts and will restrict their reach.

In other words, the number of your fans who see posts like this will drop significantly.

What makes a post ‘overly’ promotional?

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

What should your Business do to combat these changes?

1. Try to focus more heavily on ‘high-value’ posts rather than posting more often

2. Watch what types of content get shared more regularly and post more of that type of content

3. Consider using Facebook Ads to boost important content

Take a look at this example from Hershey’s Chocolate World. A timely post with a receipe that contains their chocolate which is ‘soft-selling’ as opposed to saying outright “Buy our Chocolate”.

If you are concerned about your posts being seen we can help. Philippa offers one-on-one Facebook training or you can attend group training sessions.