Good morning all,
The past few days have been a bit disappointing for myself and many other small businesses that use Facebook. I found out that Facebook will now be charging fan pages anywhere from $5-$15 to all page owners in order for fans to see status updates of any kind. This affects my business greatly.
When I started Rikki Leigh Photography, my main advertising was my Facebook page, and it still is. I get 85% of my business from Facebook. In the past few months the activity on my fan page has decreased significantly and the amount of sessions that I have been booking has as well. I thought it was me, that people were just not interested in my work. This has been plaguing me for some time now. What was going on?
I recently read an article that explained what Facebook was doing. Facebook chooses who can see your page. It is all based on an algorithm (which is completely insane), and on average only 16% of fans can actually see activity on a page. Seriously? I have 2,800 fans (from all over the United States), and roughly 500 of them can actually see what I post. Now I am going to lose those 500 fans & have to pay each time I post ANYTHING.
What is the point of having a fan page? What do bigger businesses think about this? I advertise for Facebook on my business cards, blog, website, twitter etc. Without those of us who use Facebook, the social networking site would vanish. Now if Facebook wanted me to pay $5/month to have a Facebook page and allowed ALL of my fans to see my updates, that I would be ok with. As a mom and a small business owner, I am afraid that I will not be able to pay these fees. My business is already suffering and I am afraid it will only get worse.
xoxo – Rikki
