By Hank Hoffmeier, iContact Strategic Advisor
Recently, Facebook started allowing page admins to use Promoted Posts so that their posts could be viewed by more than what Facebook’s EdgeRank would allow. Remember, on average, only 13-16% of your fans will see your post in their feed. If you pay $5, $10, $20 or more, you can have your post pushed out to more of your fans through Facebook Advertising.
But now, Facebook is allowing users to sign up for notifications from pages they like. They just have to opt in for them via the company’s Facebook page. All you need to do is mouse over the “Liked” or “Like” button on the company’s page, and a drop-down menu appears that gives you the option to “Get Notifications.”
Once a user chooses to receive notifications from a company page, s/he will receive an alert when there is activity from that company. This can be any activity, like a post or share from the brand.
This is one way for page owners to bypass the fact that their posts are not being shown to all fans. Brands can educate their fans about this new feature to encourage them to receive notifications. They can do this on a website or blog, through Facebook ads or via email.
If you encourage your fans to do this, you need to be careful. Remember your updates will show as an alert in your fan’s notification feed. And if you are very active on your page, you can clog up your fan’s feed, and they will quickly unsubscribe. In the screenshot below, the user is subscribed to only two companies, and five out of the eight alerts are from one brand.
I hope that knowing this information will help you with your Facebook marketing. But remember, do not overuse this feature. Will you encourage fans to use it?