According to InsideFacebook.com Facebook is rolling out a new feature soon for users to opt-in to receive a notification each time a page they follow posts something new. This seems to be Facebook's solution to all the business page owners frustrated by their posts not showing up in their fans news feeds because of the Facebook algorithm. Read on to learn more about it and let us know in the comments what you think.
About a month ago I shared information about Facebook's change where our fan page posts where being seen by just a small percentage of our actual fans and offered some solutions there to help out. Well it appears that Facebook heard enough complaints that they decided to roll out another option. Similar to the "close friends" option this will allow fans of your page to opt-in to being able to receive notifications each time you post something and make sure you are alerted to the news. Perfect if you have a couple favorite photographers you want to follow, an emergency news page, or any page out there you absolutely want to stay on top of... our Fstoppers Facebook page would be a good one!
According to InsideFacebook.com Facebook confirmed the move in a statement they sent them. “We are currently rolling out the ability for people to receive notifications from specific pages, friends or public figures that they are connected to. This feature will help people keep up with the people and things that they care about most.”
"With users and pages making so many posts and taking so many actions, Facebook uses an algorithm to sort News Feed rather than being a full stream like Twitter. Although the goal is to make the feed more relevant and engaging, this sometimes leads users to miss posts that they might have wanted to see. Some users have tried using Interest Lists to get a more complete feed from pages they care about. With notifications, however, users will be even more likely to see all the content from a page or person. Notifications are off by default and settings can be changed at any time."
So what do you all think? Will this be the solution we are looking for to get in front of more fans? I know many of you will be frustrated by having to now ask your fans to check the "Get Notifications" option - but let's look at this realistically. Many of our fans "Like" a couple hundred pages, maybe even a few thousand. If all the posts from those pages along with the posts from their friends were popping up in the news feed it would need to be streaming by quite rapidly in order to get it all in. By adding this new "Notification" feature we can specifically tell Facebook now we 'can't miss' a post from a particular page and stay on top of our favorite pages. I like the new option and look forward to seeing it rolled out.
As in most Facebook new features, this is apparently just being tested and has not been rolled out to everyone just yet. So stay tuned, hopefully we see it shortly!
[Thank you to Nikki Nisly for tipping me off to the news.]
not going to help much at all. I had a page with 800 likes on it and a reach of 5,000 but after the initial changes and filtering my reach went down to 100 and some posts only reached 8 people. It become completely worthless. I had a shop on there in which I sold posters and prints, my sales saw a sharp decrease so ended up just deleting it. Best decision ever.
Robert, not sure how your posts were reaching 5000 with only 800 likes. Before the Facebook recent algorithm change it was only showing up on about 50-60% of the fans. That is unless many of your posts were getting lots of viral views. Either way, Facebook is a marketing tool that has been quite successful for many of us, but each has their way of going about doing business. I would be interested in hearing how you are advertising your poster and prints now.
with 800 likes - a lot of people will share a post, which means most of their friends will see it too, each of those 800 people may have hundreds of friends and so on etc etc - the same way that "connections" work on LinkedIn - being connected to one person means you have a number of "possible" connections or in Roberts case "reach"
Adam explained perfectly how I had a reach that high. I do band/concert photography so most of the photos I posted would get spread around to their fans.
I used a Payvment store to sell posters. It was an incredible Facebook app to use and is one of the best stores I've used so far. They switched things up a bit and started a new company called Lish that kind of messed it up a bit, but it's still a viable free store option for Facebook. A lot of bands use it to sell merchandise.
Great article. It's hard to stay on top of all of Facebook's changes lately... and the option to have fans choose to "Get Notifications" seems like a good option. Hoping the roll-out reaches my page soon!
I've been trying different things to try to get my reach as far as possible, but it's just been hit and miss lately. I've got a pretty steady and active following on my photos, but then I can post a status update or link and no one seems to see it. Time of day matters, but even then it's not as consistent as it was a couple months ago. I've found promoting posts only to fans has helped expand my reach more so that fans + their friends. I look forward to any new options facebook rolls out to help manage our posts. Great article!
It's going to be pointless because it will probably be not checked by default so the average person who 'likes' a page won't check it. Good luck getting your existing followers to all check that off too.
exactly
Facebook is free. Pay to play by buying ads or play within their rules. It's a tool to be used for marketing. It's a good reminder not to get too comfortable and too dependent on one tool.
Every time I bitch about Facebook doing something with fan pages, I quickly say that exact same thing. The business I have gotten from Facebook has made it beyond worthwhile.
myspace is still open.
I must be the only one who likes the current setup. As a small business with about 1100 fans i pay $10 and reach upto 6k. Others dont pay and get less reach- makes good business sense to me.
exactly paul. for businesses facebook is a marketing instrument. now you have to pay for reach. nobody would expect flyers to be free. But with flyers you can not measure your reach!
What's wrong with paying a monthly or yearly subscription fee an to have the algorithm behave as it did before the change a couple of months ago?
I think that there should be no holding back of news feeds to fans you have already paid or worked hard for,... spend tens of thousands for !!!! think about it,.. why must we pay twice to keep our fans informed ? ,.. this is absolute nonsense. Come on FaceBook get your act together !!!!