What Facebook Counts as Too Promotional

The change arriving this month

In November Facebook said that from January, people would see fewer posts from pages that read like adverts. This month the change is reaching News Feeds.

Facebook said people had told it they wanted more posts from friends and from pages they care about, and less promotional content from pages.

It named the kinds of posts it meant, and said pages that post this way should expect to reach fewer people over time.

Plenty of small business pages posted at least one of them in December.

What counts as too promotional

• Posts that only push a purchase, a product and a price with nothing else.
• Posts that only push an app, asking people to install it and nothing more.
• Contests and draws that ask people to enter with no real context.
• Text and pictures reused exactly from the page's own adverts.
• A page made mostly of these, week after week.

The third catches many small pages twice. A draw that asks people to share the post on their timeline to enter already breaks Facebook's rules for promotions, and now it is shown less as well.

Why a plain sale post reaches fewer fans

A page's post does not go to every fan. For each person, the News Feed chooses from far more stories than they could ever read, favouring the kinds they tend to look at and respond to.

Ordinary page posts already reach only some of a page's fans. From this month, posts with the promotional traits Facebook named get less room in that choice.

The fans have not gone anywhere. They simply see less of a page whose posts are all adverts.

Paid adverts and boosted posts are a separate matter. They are shown because they were paid for, and this change is about the unpaid reach of a page's ordinary posts.

Context is the difference

The change is aimed at posts that are nothing but the push. A post that tells people something, and mentions an offer along the way, is a different thing.

A bakery's new rye loaf, with how long the dough proves and which mornings it comes out of the oven, is news. The same loaf with order now and a price is an advert.

A useful test: would a fan who has never bought anything from you be glad to see it?

What to post instead

Start with real photographs of the work, the premises and the people, taken by you rather than bought.

Add news customers can use: a change of hours, a closure for snow, a new service, a date for the calendar.

Answer the questions customers ask most, one at a time, and tell small stories about a job, a regular, or something that went wrong and how it was put right.

Offers can sit inside these, with a reason and a date, and a link to the page on your website that has the details.

Where the sale belongs

A promotion that needs to reach people belongs in a paid advert, aimed at your area, sending people to a page on your own website.

The details belong on that page: what is offered, until when, and for whom. It stays put, it can be found in search, and it does not depend on a News Feed choosing to show it.

And an advert should stay an advert. Posting its exact text and picture as an ordinary page post as well is one of the things Facebook named.

A worked example

An Irish dance school teaches children from age four and a few adult beginners in a community hall and a rented studio. Its dancers compete at weekend competitions, called feiseanna, and perform for St. Patrick's Day.

Most of its page's fans were parents, grandparents and former dancers. Through the autumn it posted the same three things in rotation.

One said registration was open, sign up today. Another offered a free month of classes in a draw for anyone who liked the page and shared the post.

The third repeated the picture and wording of its paid advert for adult beginners.

Each fitted one of the kinds Facebook named, and the draw also broke the rules for promotions. When a parent asked in December when spring term started, the answer had been posted three times.

The teachers now post what happens in class: the older beginners' first try at hard shoes, results from a weekend competition, the St. Patrick's Day performance schedule as it fills.

Photographs of dancers go up with parents' permission. Registration appears inside those posts, with the start date and a link to the website, the adult beginners' advert runs only as an advert, and the draw is gone.

Watching what reaches people

Page Insights, the statistics Facebook gives page owners, shows how many people each post reached, split between unpaid and paid.

Watch reach rather than likes. A post can be seen by many fans and liked by few, and reach is the figure this change moves.

Compare a month of posts with context against a month of plain offers. The difference tells you more about your own fans than any general advice, including this.

Note it somewhere, since the comparison is only useful if someone still remembers it in the spring.

The counter-case

Some pages have fans who genuinely want the offers. A bakery whose regulars wait for the day-old bread notice may find that kind of post still does well, because people respond to it.

Not every business needs to post often, either. Two good posts a month beat a daily advert, and a page is never a substitute for your own website and email list.

For most small pages, though, the advice is simple: post with context, run promotions as adverts, and keep the details on your site.

This month

1. Read your last ten posts as a fan would.
2. Mark the ones that only push a sale.
3. End any contest that requires sharing or a page like.
4. Give every offer a reason and a date.
5. Run real promotions as paid adverts.
6. Put offer details on your website.
7. Check reach in Page Insights each month.

Step four turns an advert back into news. An offer with a reason behind it is worth reading; the same offer on its own is the kind of post Facebook now shows less.

Who writes and approves those posts is part of who decides what goes on the website this year.

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