According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, Facebook is going to start clamping down on ecommerce entrepreneurs who use Facebook to promote their wares and services on the social network using social and unpaid for methods.
It seems that they want to aggressively increase the monetisation of the site and drive adoption of their paid-for advertising services. That means free promotion to followers and friends will be stymied, it seems.
It’s not clear exactly how Facebook are going to detect and then enforce such an idea but it is going to impact those who have built up a network of friends and followers interested in the products they sell online. It’s also just a bit naff, if it’s all true. Facebook have encouraged people to build those webs of interested buyers over time. It stinks to change that opportunity.
We’ll see how it pans out: do you promote your business on Facebook and will these changes have an impact on your marketing?
3 Responses
I do promote on a Facebook wall and would give up if charges applied. After all I am giving up my time to encourage Facebook members to visit Facebook. Why should I be charged for this? I should be charging Facebook! What are the going rates for authors of original material these days?
I have tried toutng my whares on facebook but it didn’t seem to have any effect so I stopped. I think it’s becuase items didn’t break out of the cycle of friends to reach potential customers. The majority of my facebook friends are sellers themselves, don’t live in the UK or are family (and get stuff from me for free if they want it). I’m not reaching potential customers and ahve no idea really how to break out of that.
My issue is now mute really if facebook are going to be putting a stop to any advertising or promoting for free.