If you manage a facebook page with over 400 followers, you may have noticed a new button appearing lower right in the post window – Promote.
So what does it do?
For a fee (and investors were wondering where facebook was going to generate its income) you can now promote your post directly as a sponsored story on your follower’s – and their friend’s – walls.
So why is this important? The main reason is that many of your followers miss your posts – particularly if they follow many pages (it’s hard to understand how some followers have “liked” 20,000 pages or more – but they have!) – but, more importantly, it can push your post in front of friends of followers, and this can be an effective way of attracting new followers.
There is little doubt that the power of recommendation is a cornerstone of the facebook experience – and this is a way to harness that to your marketing efforts. But, be careful, there is a growing resentment about the intrusion from advertisers, so be careful that the posts you choose to promote are useful and informative – designed to attract the kind of follower you are interested in having, and not just someone who thought that a picture of a cute puppy was worth following…. you’re unlikely to sell your product or service to them in the future and all you are doing is giving yourself a false sense of achievement.
