Many businesses are prepared to spend money to build their fan base on Facebook

If you want to reach your Facebook fans, you’re going to have to spend money. Many businesses are prepared to spend money to build their fan base, yet balk at the idea of paying to get their posts into the newsfeed of their fans.

But, if you’re not prepared to spend money to show up in the news feed of your fans going forward, you should question the value of your business being on Facebook.
A recent Examiner.com article put it this way, “Facebook statistics show organic reach for your Business Page is dropping like a bowling ball off a high-rise.” And the only solution to this dilemma is for you to pay Facebook for promoted posts, and advertising.


Yes, in the early days of Facebook it was relatively easy to get your business page posts into the news feed of your fans. Today it is much more difficult, and good content won’t even do the trick for most.
What at one time was considered to be free, with the possible exception of building the ‘likes’ on your business page, has blossomed into something that more closely resembles traditional advertising, at least in terms of having to pay to get in front of your target audience.

But the reality is that what Facebook has done to date, and pretty much every other social network out there, is to build a market for their product. They’ve built their brand and they’ve done it by creating a product that many consumers love – and many others love-hate. And they’ve done it by leveraging the free service they provide to the average consumer, by monetizing the service they provide to business to reach those who use their service for free.

Of course, this didn’t just happen overnight. This was part of their long-term strategy – build a platform consumers love and use, give businesses a (free) taste of how they can reach this audience (think ‘lost leader’) and then, once business has experienced a taste of the exposure Facebook can give them, slowly wean them off free and into paying to reach new and existing fans.

As frustrating as it may be to discover the Facebook fan base we’ve built is no longer reachable, to a large extent, without putting out some of our hard earned cash, it is reality and it is the future. All the major social networks are heading in this direction, looking for ways to monetize their services to business.