Facebook caused a kerfuffle among Page owners recently when word got out that posts were reaching as little as 15% of a given Page’s fans. The solution proposed by Facebook was to buy advertising within the platform in order to reach a larger percentage of users. Essentially, Facebook told brands to pay for access to the users who already asked to see their updates when they Liked the Page.
No surprise, response to the paid advertising option has been overwhelmingly negative. But this month, in a move that appears to try to smooth things over with Page owners, Facebook has rolled out the new Pages Feed — an all-branded corral for updates from Facebook Pages. For individuals logged into Facebook, the Pages feed appears in the left-hand navigation. Clicking it brings the users to a feed of posts only from the brands they follow. The number next to the Pages link shows how many new updates are in the feed since the last visit.
While some Page updates will continue to be seen in Facebook users’ News feeds, all updates from brands can be found in this Pages feed.
The tool may not please Page owners as much as having all their posts seen by all their fans would, but it is a step in the right direction. As the tool is rolled out to the entire Facebook population, brands can remind their fans to regularly check the feed to see all the updates they thought they were missing. The change may also result in happier Facebook users. In a survey conducted in July by an English consumer deals website, 53% of respondents said that Facebook had become too commercial and 34% said they “liked” a number of pages but hid them from their news feeds because they became too intrusive. Giving users a place to see branded updates when they want to, rather than having them overrun their news feeds, could work out for the better. —Lauren Hunter, senior editor, REMODELING.
