Everyone like the scent of money but it seems Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, has grown fondness of it to the next level. Clandestinely the Facebook page owners are hit by the recent changes in Faceook in order to monetize it. Facebook recently added the option of “promoted posts” and this is where it changed the things which is noticed by many a page owner. How is it happening and how to tackle these changes, let see.

The Incoming:

These changes have been making the rounds for quite sometime and is being implemented gradually for everyone. First lets see what are the changes that one see while posting something on his/her page. When you write an new status or post and try to post it, Facebook provide you with an option to promote it in following manner:

And what is the price one needs to pay for it? Well not much too high. I was offered $10 for 16,000 impressions.

Reasonable amount for some big hot shot brand that needs more audience but for regular page owner this is unnecessary luxury. Moreover for page owners with huge number of fans (in tens of thousands) it should not really matter as they already have huge audience. And this is where it makes a difference.

Since these changes many page owners saw a huge dip in the number of likes and comments on their posts/status/photos. Moreover, Facebook gives an insight of the posts reflecting the “reach of the post”:

Now the sudden dip in the number of likes is explained by the decreasing reach of the posts. This may force some page owner to opt for promoted posts but not everyone is running a business page for brand promotion. And this has and will hit the common page owners (in the same way as rising fuel prices have hit common man).

The Resistance:

Facebook has forced a lot of things on the users and there are no way out to get rid of them. But remember, when there is no way out, there is still always a way through. There are few tricks up the sleeves that can save you to some extent in this situation.

Since these changes have been made under the disguise of showing in users’ News Feed the things which interests them, we can use the same strategy. Facebook shows the posts from pages which users have added to their interests list or have interacted (like, comment, share) with. So here is the thing which you need to do:

• Request your page fans to add your page to their interests list:
• Request your page fans to actively like, comment and share the posts.

What you say, is it a legitimate step from Facebook to earn more revenue or is it the violation of ethics? I would love to know your views on it. Feel free to comment.