If you have a business, even a small one, please remember that all of the Likes, Fans and Shares you have will not matter at all if Facebook won’t allow you to speak to them. As it stands, your ‘earned’ Facebook audience will not see your news feeds 100% of the time.  In fact, without paying Facebook, Facebook says only about 16% of your Fans will see your posts (although there are several articles that say these numbers are slightly higher).

About two years ago, well known entrepreneur, Mark Cuban, found this out firsthand when his marketing team tried to send out a message about his Dallas Mavericks to his million followers on Facebook. Facebook prompted them that it would cost about $1000 dollars to do this. Suddenly, the Fans her thought he had a relationship with, turned out to be fully under Facebook’s control.

So that happened two years ago, why am I writing about this now?  Because I consistently speak with small businesses that don’t realize that Facebook is very much Pay to Play – and not only to reach brand new people but to reach even the people that have said they are interested in what you have to say.  My takeaway – if you’re a business that values the amount of time and effort that goes into building relationships, it probably makes sense to not put all of your eggs in one basket.  More importantly, try to make sure you get your Fans’ email addresses.  Those opted -in addresses make it easy to stay in touch with or without Facebook’s help.  We will do a follow up post that includes some ideas for doing this within the coming week.  If you have a bunch of fans but aren’t getting much out of them, let us help.