Facebook Pulling Back Feeds of Status Updates for Businesses, Churches

From home-based hobby sales, to cottage industries, to small business, to corporations having 500,000 likes, Facebook is scaling back the practice of putting posts into the feeds of readers, and the policy change has impact for non-profits and churches as well.

Many small businesses currently operate as a ‘page’ adjunct to an individual’s personal Facebook profile. Just as you ‘friend’ the person, you ‘like’ the business. Years ago, Facebook started restricting what you see from individuals and business alike.  The logic went, ‘if you have 300 friends and they post twice a day, you’d have 600 updates to read daily.’

But small businesses noticed that much of what they posted wasn’t getting to anyone, with averages of 16% being normal. If someone took the effort to visit the page, they could see everything, but most people who ‘check Facebook’ read only what the algorithm assigns to their feed.

Instead they were being told to ‘boost’ each post with a payment ranging — for small business — between $5 and $33. Many times the posts weren’t even selling anything, but updating readers on local events in an effort to build community.

Then last month, the Wall Street Journal reported things would change more severely:

The change will make it more difficult for entrepreneurs… to reach fans of their Facebook pages with marketing posts that aren’t paid advertising.

Businesses that post free marketing pitches or reuse content from existing ads will suffer “a significant decrease in distribution,” Facebook warned in a post earlier this month announcing the coming change…

…More than 80% of small companies using social media to promote their businesses list Facebook as their top marketing tool, followed by LinkedIn and Twitter, according to a recent survey of 2,292 small businesses by Webs, a digital services division of Vistaprint. The top three reasons owners cited for creating a Facebook page were customer acquisition, building a network of followers and increasing brand awareness, according to the survey.

Dan Levy, Facebook’s vice president of small business, says that Facebook’s paid-advertising options have become more effective recently and that companies should view Facebook as a tool to “help them grow their businesses, not a niche social solution to getting more reach or to make a post go viral.”

He says he has “a lot of empathy” for business owners who “are feeling this evolution” in the reduction of what he describes as organic reach. But, he says, organic reach is only one of several reasons companies benefit from having a presence on Facebook. Last month, there were more than one billion visits to Facebook pages directly. “Having a presence where you can be discovered still has a ton of value,” he says…

This is a small part of the entire article, click here to read at WSJ.

But it gets worse, as churches and non-profits will also be affected.  One writer suggests the strategy over the next few months should be to get those Facebook friends to respond to something that provides their email address (and in countries where applicable, express consent for placing them on on a list.)

Over the past 18 months, one of the biggest challenges with Facebook marketing is not knowing exactly what changes are on the horizon and how it will impact organic reach. We believe that eventually organic reach on larger nonprofit Facebook pages will reach close to 0%, so marketing on Facebook will significantly change.

Read more at NonBoardBoard

One website, while overtly trying to sell a print report, offers some clues:

The ability to build communities of fans, and then maintain contact and encourage engagement using content published to fans’ News Feeds was a critical aspect of Facebook’s early appeal to marketers. The opportunity of achieving engagement at scale motivated many brands and corporates to invest millions in developing communities and providing for care and feeding via always-on content…

This isn’t an academic exercise. Facebook Zero is a reality now facing every brand and business with a presence on the platform. Action is required, and specific decisions will need to be made with regard to content planning, paid support for social media activities, audience targeting and much more.

Read more at Ogilvy.com

But social media of one kind or another is so essential. In a recent 48-minute podcast at the aptly-named Church Marketing Sucks, the director of Social Media for Saddleback Church offered a number suggestions as well as stressing the importance of social media for churches.

Listen to the podcast here.

The same website also offered suggestions for using social media at Christmas. While most of these arrive too late for this year, you could file them away for 2015, but with Facebook Zero coming soon, the information may seem antiquated a year from now, or even sooner.

Want to switch your emphasis over to Instagram. I wouldn’t. Remember, in 2012, Facebook paid $1 Billion to acquire the photo site. What’s happening on FB will certainly follow on Instagram.

Twitter, anyone?

This Facebook page image serves as a reminder that what Facebook decides here has worldwide impact on Churches and Christian charities. That’s 2,868 people the organization is engaging with in the UK that it now has to find other means to reach.

Wednesday Link List

Wednesday List Lynx

Not only these, but there was a link list on Saturday as well. *UPDATE* 8:00 PM — Yes, I know about the PSY parody. We might run it here Friday. Click to watch Farmer Style. *END UPDATE*

• Since 1642 it has been against the rules of the Roman Catholic Church to use tobacco during the mass. Learn more in a history of the church, the saints and smoking.
• And speaking of the Catholic Church, here’s the photo-op of the week where Pope Benedict invites circus and street performers to The Vatican and as a long time cat lover, gets to pet a lion cub.
• “Whenever there is a fire in a house of worship, it has a tremendous impact on the fabric of a community,” said a Cape Cod fire marshal after a Christian and Missionary Alliance church fell victim to arson.
• Two years after recording a Christmas album, Canada’s Steve Bell has another one. Read about Keening for the Dawn and if you hurry, your copy will ship in time for the 24th.
• Okay, how about an article showing parallels in two lives: Justin Bieber and King David? According to Ben at the blog On Pop Theology, it’s not that big a stretch.
  
• The recent tensions at Sovereign Grace Ministries could mean the severing of ties from one of its flagship churches.
  
• Francis Chan had huge hits with Crazy Love and Forgotten God, but I had wondered if Multiply was more of a curriculum item. Customers didn’t. The book landed on a New York Times ‘advice’ bestseller list.
• Greg Koukl either answers or skirts the following question in a short video: Are angels also made in God’s image? What do you think?
• Jennings’ Messiah? In a modern world, corporate sponsorship and branding would rule the day. We may call it Handel’s Messiah, but latest evidence points to the fact that Handel’s patron was Charles Jennings, without whom the project wouldn’t have happened.
• Ten years ago the Liberty Counsel started the “Naughty or Nice” list showing retailers which acknowledge Christmas and which ones marginalize the holiday’s faith origin. Which side of the list do you think is growing?
• For people in youth ministry and student ministry, here’s a link that will take you to a sample chapter of Ministering to Gay Teenagers from Six:11 Ministries. 
• Like the Energizer Bunny, InterVarsity’s student missions conference, Urbana, just keeps on going. This year it’s in St. Louis from Dec 27 – 31.
  
• Thinking Out Loud flashback post: When “OMG” and “WTF” Come to Church. And watch your language.
• Ethics Department: Even after you’ve made the right decision, it doesn’t mean you’re done wrestling with it. 
• Too late for this year’s Thanksgiving, but I still enjoyed this 6.5 minute film from Ransom.tv about the importance of family.
  
• The UK’s ChurchAds.net is to blame for the God Baby ads. “He cries. He wees. He saves the world.” Cute advertising copy or borderline blasphemy? You decide. Don’t look for an image here, I’m not reposting it.
• The proprietor of Ironic Catholic thinks the Coexist folks are making things a little crazy:
  

• The lynx is not alone this time: We end today with some book covers which appeared here in a 2008 post dealing with whether or not Fluffy and Fido will be in heaven. These are real books that were available for purchase when the post was written. First we took the Chuck Colson position that argues against animals in the afterlife. Then, four months later, in August, 2008; I was persuaded by the Randy Alcorn position which argues for furry friends, though not resurrected ones. Trust me, you could split a church over this topic…

Monday Link List

Rejected from the position of Wednesday List Lynx, this one wants to know if a mascot position for a Monday List Lynx is opening up.

Monday?

Because (a) there’s no law against it, and (b) some of these just couldn’t wait!

• That’s Dr. Gloria Gaither to you, as the southern gospel songstress receives an honorary doctorate in music from Nyack College, a Christian and Missionary Alliance school in New York.
• Okay, we just lost our younger demographic. So, in the interest of equal time, Hawk Nelson now has a new lead singer.
• In other music news, here’s 15 Tips for Bloggers from John Newton, the “Amazing Grace” guy and brother to Fig. I hope my family doesn’t notice #14.
• You don’t usually think of English language Bible commentaries as being tainted by Western culture, but you will upon learning about the Africa Study Bible.
  
• The daughter of Teen Mania founder Ron Luce was the only survivor of a weekend plane crash involving five people heading to a youth conference
  
• Is it possible that the study saying that religious people are less compassionate is true? Or are they giving more out of moral obligation than emotional response?
• Here’s a debrief of the movie Courageous; all the movie trivia and hidden details you never knew. And now you know the rest of the story.
• For those who need to know, here’s a list of all the Christian colleges that have a gay-friendly organizations on or off campus. Is that Wheaton I see on this list? And Biola?
  
• Philip Yancey pays the price of frequent mountain climbing in Colorado and undergoes knee surgery. He also explains what they do to make sure it’s the right correct knee.
  
• Tony Jones writes, “Catholicism in America seems to continue its quest for irrelevance via misogyny;” and then reblogs a CNN story about a Catholic school that would rather forfeit a championship game than play a team fielding a girl on second base.
  
• The proprietors of a Canadian website design company have a background in film production, which creates many different options for churches and Christian organizations.
  
• E. Parson Ross isn’t the first person to do this, but her new book on Church Etiquette should be of help to the uninitiated.
• The 133 member choir, Only Boys Aloud was amazing on Britain’s Got Talent, but this translation of their song’s lyrics shows it was actually a hymn; though the performance is inspiring in any language.
  
• Apparently Satan doesn’t want people attending Redemption World Outreach Center in Greenville, South Carolina; or so two billboards in town say.
  
• Many more to come — Lord willing — on Wednesday

An Outreach Piece The Smallest Church Can Afford

I first presented this here two years ago, but I remain convinced that it’s an inexpensive mailer concept that can be done by even the smallest church, and one that will especially resonate if your church is located near a mass transit line where people spend hours each week sitting on subways or light rail with their faces stuck inside a newspaper.

It’s a mailing piece that costs virtually nothing to produce, in fact it might work better the closer you can get to black-and-white, photocopy quality. You can also do a four-color enhancement of the idea with background gradients and even a photo of your church on the back page. Furthermore if you actually did photocopy them, you could target individual streets or blocks.

The mailer is a simple 8.5 x 11 piece of paper (an A4 for you Brits) folded in half, producing a four-page layout. Each page contains the grid for the popular newspaper Sudoku game where you fill in the numbers from one to nine without repeating any within any given row, column or sub-square. Only on this the squares are all blank, with the first page bearing the text, “Sudoku Blanks. Because sometimes you just want to start all over.”

Talk about hitting two points of identification at once! This concept identifies with everybody who sees it, but for the exception of Canadian pastors I first shared it with who, for reasons I do not understand, do not read newspapers. (Or if they do, they certainly don’t lower themselves to looking at things on the puzzles and comics page, even though this occupies much of the time of anyone in their congregation who rides a commuter train or kills time in the staff lunchroom at the plant, or whatever, on a daily basis.)

The top two-thirds of each page are simply the blank grid as you see it above.

The rest of the piece’s text can be written as needed with as hard or soft a connection between your church and doing puzzles as you wish, In our sample version (available on request by e-mail if you can open a .pub file attachment) the pages read:

Page two:

You’re just about done and then you see it—two numbers the same in the same row, column or box. You try to backtrack a few steps, but eventually you realize the only way to win is to start over. Given the chance for a do-over, most of us get it right the second time.

Page three:

…If only life were like that; if only there was a way to get a new beginning a new start. But really there is; the Christian concept of grace is just that; the board’s wiped clean, everything begins fresh. We can’t turn back the clock, but we can get our record cleared and allow the scars to heal.

Page four:

The concept of grace isn’t widely talked about these days. If it’s new to you, or you want to unpack the meaning of a fresh start, let’s get together and talk about new beginnings.

Community Village Church
Sunday Mornings at 9:00 or 11:00
or drop by the office anytime during the week
555-555-1234
church@email.dot

I know that personal contact is better than mailing pieces, but if you think this has any merit as a discussion starter and you want to use it; just let me know, mail me a couple of souvenir copies and let me know how it works for you. Sudoku continues to be popular, and people will relate to this. It’s a useful piece of paper that may find itself sticking around long after other mailing pieces have been thrown out, and Joe or Barb or Dave might even find themselves making multiples of it on the copier where they work; hopefully with your church name intact. They may even drop by your church office just to pick up more blanks!