Why Promoting on the Facebook Timeline is Good and Bad | Bedford Hills Real Estate

Facebook has made another change to how you can market on Facebook.

Is this good news or not?

A couple of years ago, they decided to forbid running promotions directly on  the page and made the use of a third party app mandatory. This restriction is  now gone.  You can now run a promotion without using a third party  app.

There are still rules though, and not everything can be done. Nonetheless,  this can be a good option in some instances, or a very poor one in others.

Let’s review the pros and cons of this new possibility.

#1. The good part

So what you can do when  running a promotion on  your timeline and  why can it be a good option?

The new terms  of service and the accompanying FAQ they have put together are pretty clear about what you  can do:

• You don’t HAVE to use a  third party app anymore to run a promotion on your page (you still can, but it  is not mandatory)
• If you run your promotion  directly on your page, entries to the promotion can be made by either posting on  the page, liking or commenting a page post, or messaging the page.

If you have a small audience and want to offer a prize, it’s now super  simple:

1. Post to your page that  people may just “post” or “message” the page or “like” or “comment” a post of the page
2. Tell them you’ll pick a  winner among the ones who have done so

Super fast, super easy and free!

You can even pay for ads and get the concerned post displayed to more people  than your usual organic reach (between 5 and 50% of your fans). The ad part is probably the main  motivation for Facebook to change its rules by the way, but that’s a different  story.

A good example would be the following:

• You have a small business  and a couple thousand fans and you are launching a new product
• You want your fans and the  world to know about it
• At the same time you want  to engage with the announcement
• Create a post announcing  the launch
• include a nice picture  and ask your fans to find a name for the new product using the comments on the  post
• Pick the name you like  among the comments and you have a winner.

 

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http://www.jeffbullas.com/2013/09/02/why-promoting-on-the-facebook-timeline-is-good-and-bad/#kxXoFfoBSdZTxRTl.99