A Guide to Abandoning Facebook Fanpages
As more small and personal businesses realize they aren’t getting the reach they want from Facebook, I’ve come across countless abandoned Facebook fanpages.
From non-profits, to marketing agencies, authors and internet tools, company after company seems to be either stepping up their Facebook marketing by advertising (pay to play), or abandoning their fanpage for another possibly better platform. I suggest Twitter, Linkedin or Pinterest for now.
As a marketer I can see why. Some of these companies have very small budgets to play with, their income goes first to business bills and then lives with their families, even the smallest investment gone awry in Facebook marketing could be detrimental to their budgets.
On the other hand, I know as a business, that you have to take risks, I can see that there may be less risky investments for these companies even if they could spend so little on Facebook.
In reality, $10 a day that goes down the toilet in Facebook ads (assuming they are not experts in Facebook advertising- where targeting ads can be tricky) is $300 a month, enough for taking your kids to karate classes and a date night with your spouse- among other things.
Either way I understand the great stampede to leave Facebook. I don’t think Facebook will suffer too much in the end, but I don’t like the way they went about this either- just my opinion.
Steps For Abandoning Facebook
My opinions on why people are leaving aside, let’s talk about what you can and should do if you plan on abandoning Facebook:
- Automate Updates From Other Platforms- Remember you do have fans you can reach some of the time on Facebook, you don’t want to abandon them, so you’ll need to set something up that sends updates to the fanpage, perhaps when you update Twitter or Google plus. Friend Plus is a good tool for this, but you can also use Buffer for free, or even Hootsuite.
- Post regularly- a post every couple of days is fine to stay active
- Login to Facebook Regularly- even if you aren’t active there, you need to know if someone is commenting or leaving messages on your page. I suggest turning on notifications for email so that you’ll be notified immediately when someone reaches out to you.
- Stop pushing likes- If you aren’t going to do much with Facebook, you might as well stop pushing likes. Stop any active promotions, but leaving the option to check out facebook live on your website.
“People Expect Businesses To Have A Fanpage”
*People expect you to have a facebook fanpage, similar to expecting you to have a website. It’s another place they can use to get a hold of you, and sometimes you can reach them as well.
Your fanpage is not a lost cause, it may come in handy later on when you can afford to advertise, and it may still generate some traffic and exposure to your business, so use one of the tools discussed and keep it active while not putting in too much effort.
Summary
If you’ve noticed a drop in reach and Facebook is no longer working for you, you might find better luck on another website. While you can take off and not worry much about your fanpage, it’s a better practice to keep it updated on a somewhat regular basis because it is still a place that represents your business online.
For other willing to pay to play, I don’t blame you, Facebook still produces good numbers and let’s you connect with dedicated fans. There are still a lot of good reasons to stay.
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Ah, excellent advice! Especially for established pages. I manage an established page for an independent bakery and while the average post is getting 5-10% reach, we do regularly see nice spikes in reach & engagement. We finally broke down this Summer and started paying for ads if there was something very specific to promote. A $20-50 highly targeted spend is totally worth it. I would never, ever pay for likes though.
But for a brand new business, I’d probably just set up the page & automate content as you suggest. You’re never going to get the free organic reach we used to see a couple of years ago.
I agree, and I’d love to hear more about how the paid marketing is helping. I don’t think paying for likes at this point is worth it for fanpages. I am interested in how they are going to push likes now without like-gating. I know they want people to buy likes (effectively) but what benefit is there in it?
Mary
For this particular business, we’ve had two situations for which we’ve placed ads. For the first ad, I focused on adding people to our email list. I focused on our followers and others in our geographic area that are interested in our niche and excluded folks already on our list. That got us about 40 subscribers for $20.
The next ad we ran was to promote a specific product we were selling for Fourth of July. What surprised me with that one is that it got 16 shares and a bunch of comments. So the reach ended up being much more than I paid for. And sales on the product were nice also so everyone was happy.
Another side effect of running ads is a spike in likes. Not that that’s super helpful, but it could be used for future targeting.
Even though we’ve been happy with the results, we’re still only using ads on a limited basis. Less than one a month.
That is great, it would sound (to me) that paid advertising is doing well for you. I love hearing stories like this, because small businesses are constantly saying they can’t afford to pay for advertising on Facebook but then you spent $20 and got real results. I think people need to be more invested in their company’s success and make that investment. Of course, Facebook doesn’t always make this easy so we have to consider that as well. The advertising platform can be confusing and cause people to make mistakes and lose money, just like Google Adwords used to. There has to be a balance.
Mary