I admit that I haven’t always been good at social sites. You would think that being a blogger would pretty much make me an expert on wanting to be involved where the people are. The truth is its one more thing to add to the pile that only grows during the day and somewhere along the line I have to remind myself that I work to live not live to work. Because of that, I am constantly looking for ways to improve my productivity. With Facebooks new algorithm changes and how it determines your EdgeRank, getting those statuses, links, picture shares, and updates have become downright difficult.

I am almost glad I haven’t spend the last 5 years building up my Facebook because what I would be facing now would be disappointment as my viewers didn’t exactly “view”.

In any case, after a good year of solid productivity over there, I am unhappy to see that some of my posts are less active than they were a few months ago before all the changes.  So recently I invested the $5 promotional fee to see if that indeed made a difference on visibility, likes, or even traffic to my blog posts.

Here are some screenshot examples of how updates on my Facebook page are counting for your own research:

Regular status, no photos, no links, no paid promotion: 

This post had no “shares”.

Regular status, 1 photo, no paid promotion:

Incidentally this was shared 50 times from my page but did not increase any views to my own page.

Status, with picture, tagging another facebook page in the status

Sharing someone elses status on my page:

Link Only

This is my paid Promotion.

It included a photo and had a link to a contest:

I used a food post to test this out since food is highly looked at online.

Here is a break down of Facebook stats on direct page views to my Facebook page that is higher on paid promotion day:

Here is my paid vs organic vs viral content…

As you can see, my paid content didn’t even scratch what my viral content reaches and was neck and neck with my organic…

I also noticed while I did have a few more “likes” than usual during the day of the paid promotion and following, I also had more UNLIKES than usual.  And while my total reach was longer that week following promotion, it was also due to a few “viral” statuses that had a lot of activity and not that particular post.

My thoughts?

I only spent $5, so I wasn’t really OUT anything, but overall I didn’t gain any solid users and also noticed no significant traffic increase to my blog as a result.  The only reason I could see value in continuing paid promotion is if a brand wanted to ensure visibility on a specific status, but if you force feed your content to people you may end up with enough unlikes to make you think twice.

Personally I plan on testing this out again with a non promotional status to see if it makes a difference. Those results will be posted on Top Mom Blogger.

For now, judging by the past month of Facebook updates, the strongest interaction you can get is just being transparent and organic. Talk to people instead of telling people, ask instead of dictating, and listen instead of linking. My strongest Facebook status and interactions come from just a flat out text based exchange that encourages conversation and discussion. They are the only ones of mine that go over 1000 views on a continuous basis. They have no photos, no links, no shares, no tags and are the most widely visible in my network.

Have you tested out “paid” on facebook?

How did it work for you?

~trisha

 follow me on facebook here.