(KATV) Is Facebook your friend? Or does the company just want your money? Some area businesses are concerned they will have to start paying for friends to view their status posts.
It is a new advertising tool for business pages. To make it clear, Facebook says nothing is changing, but you will now have the option to make sure more friends get your status updates.
Mike Juliano who owns Hot Dog Mike uses Facebook to tell loyal followers where he'll be stationed every day, but with less than 10-percent of them getting the message, Facebook has rolled out a "promote" button. Push it and pay to make sure more friends see your post.
He says, "Between $5 and $20 dollars a post, that could add up fast."He wouldn't be surprised if it goes away eventually. "You know how these days when certain people appear in your feed too much because they post to much? You hide them. I have a feeling that it may counter balance the idea behind it."
Elizabeth Bowles says, "The promote button actually moves it one step closer to produce revenue for small businesses." Over at Aristotle, in addition to providing internet services, they manage a number of Facebook accounts for clients; some have tens of thousands of friends.
Bowles views the promote button as another tool to make sure the client gets the optimal benefit. "And if your post is very good, they might send it to their friends which increases your reach."
The administrator gets a report on how many fans saw the status, but there's a catch, "They may or may not have actually seen it. It's sort of like a television commercial, it may be when they got up and got a soda from the refrigerator. But they potentially could have seen it so Facebook is counting on who might have seen it and that's based on the number of impressions."
When Juliano is asked if he'll be pushing the promote button, he says, "Nope, not me. I prefer an honest stop through versus a forced, hey look at me."
Mollie Martin with Personally Stitched says she'd prefer a monthly flat rate rather than per post. Again, you don't have to pay, it's just an option for business pages to reach more friends at a time.
The feature is not available for personal profiles… yet.
Only on Business Pages
