First, the Reachpocalypse, where Facebook massively reduced organic reach of business pages. And now, the Promocalypse where Facebook has decreed that as of January, 2015 overly promotional posts from business pages will be treated like a North Korean political opponent.
The potential ramifications of this disappearing act are significant for businesses that set aside Facebook landing pages (when THAT was banned) and Facebook like-gating (because THAT’s now banned too) in favor of a steady stream of organic posts festooned with breathless calls to action of dubious net present value to their fans.
Unlike Reachpocalypse, where Facebook didn’t really say anything on the record about it until 9 months after the evidence appeared, with Promocalypse they fired a warning shot60+ days in advance via a post on the Facebook for Business blog (a resource I recommend you read with regularity).
What Facebook Says You Shouldn’t Do in Your Facebook Marketing
In that blog post (which spawned hundreds of reaction posts), Facebook called out three types of posts that would receive the Kim Jong-Un treatment:
- Posts that solely push people to buy a product or install an app
- Posts that push people to enter promotions and sweepstakes with no real context
- Posts that reuse the exact same content from ads
So essentially, don’t do this (but in Facebook organic post form):
