Facebook has been on an evolutionary, rising trajectory for quite a while. It has expanded from personal pages to groups to business pages.
Personal pages were once limited to 5000 friends. Now, you can have followers, effectively ending the 5000 person limit.
The biggest change
As a business user of Facebook (personal OR business page), you might be surprised to know that fewer than 20% of your connections receive your status updates on their news feed.
And, because the news feed shows on a continuous stream, ‘receiving your status update’ does not guarantee it will be seen or read.
Getting Tuned Out
Whether for personal, business, political, religious, humor, or other reasons, your ‘friends’ may change your relationship to ‘don’t show in news feed’. There is no indication or notification from your view; you have just been ‘muted.’
Facebook Goes Cha Ching!
The goal for Facebook is to make money. On a personal post, you can click the PROMOTE button, and pay for additional viewership for $6.95. Your post will remain more prominent in the newsfeed, delivering you more readers. The statistics are inexact. After the promotion (2-3 days), you will see a couple of notices, announcing something like this:
- Organic views: 14%
- Paid views: 86%
Problem is, the statistics don’t give you a raw number, from which to calculate exact numbers. You cannot determine what the numbers are.
Business Pages use a different term called BOOST. You are offered a couple of ways to reach a larger audience. You can reach people who are friends of those who LIKE your page... or reach more people by choosing a customized set of demographics.
You can select a budget up to $30 per BOOST… In advance of the campaign, you will be able to see a range of how many additional people will receive your post.
And, after the campaign is completed, you will see detailed statistics. including:
- The additional people who see your message by PAID REACH.
- Their ENGAGEMENT: How many people CLICK or LIKE the message.
- And the ORGANIC REACH.
You will also receive messages suggesting that you pay to BOOST your message, again.
Paid visibility on Facebook is an inexact science.
One thing is clear… having 2000 friends, or 2000 likes on your business page, doesn’t guarantee that you’ll have nearly that many people who see or read your public messages.
Andy Ebon
Wedding Marketing Expert
The Wedding Marketing Blog
Reach The Las Vegas Wedding Market 
Pingback: Facebook Update Protocol | Reach The Las Vegas Wedding Market
While your points here Andy are valid and quite poignant I think at this point in the social media arena it’s important to educate our network on how to maximize their content on Facebook. With the open graph and other recent changes made to Facebook it’s important for users to understand how the news feeds are populated. The crawlers on Facebook work much the same way as they do for Google. In some cases depending on the source of the content quantity can outweigh quality. The Facebook Crawlers happen to favor news sites, magazines, blogs, and other media sites. That being said Here are a few tips to maximize your content!
1.Make sure your content is publicly available! When content is hidden or protected by passwords and opt in (landing pages) crawlers can’t return the link thus reducing the likelihood that shared link will appear in the news feeds.
2. Use images that are at least 1200 x 630 for best the best quality also be sure to include a caption and tag business names and people in the image. However, do not randomly tag individuals or brands that are not directly related to the image (annoying).
3. Participate! Encourage your content creators to turn on follow! Be sure to like and share images and content generated by others…. what goes around comes around! It’s SOCIAL media remember!
4. Study your insights and analytics! Understand who is looking at your content and what they like to look at and sharpen your focus. Give them what they crave!