Facebook Is Clamping Down On Promoting On Pages Starting January

Another good reason why FAA should alter the promo tools that we use to post our images on Facebook to exclude the buy art now!" logo.,(and the link) Guaranteed the other sites like Twitter and Google+ will follow suit.

I'm not sure how much Facebook has actually helped me, other than reminding folks that I have work here. I don't see a lot of hits generated from Facebook posts and my "reach" via FB seems limited.

What I have decided to do in light of this is use my FB page to promote an email campaign, and use that to promote my work. I just hope Master of the Universe Facebook lets me do that.

Haven't they done things like this before? Besides, I don't think Facebook is all that effective anyway.

Well I wonder if our sharing of the image without a "BUY ME" on it will be buried.. If links get buried Facebook will be useless. I'm betting that it will be looking for key phrases like you posted up above. Install this, of limited time offer...

I hope that if we talk about the artwork and how it was created then it won't be touched... But what I bet will get buried it every single post is just a image link saying new artwork... Not that I would ever pay attention to a site like that, I would bet that if FB sees no interaction on the part of viewers then it will be considered spam or advertising.

Basically if you are using FB to advertise your "things" then FB wants its cut.

In my opinion if you primarily interact with viewers of your FB page posting images that are not linked to FAA and get people commenting on the image then you will go unfiltered. I would suspect that if you upload images and then post a link to FAA (kind of an after thought) that would also go under the radar.

To be honest and a few have heard me say this before, if all you do is post links to your AW site saying hey! please share and come buy my artwork! Well I ignore folks like that and I would most likely shut down notifications from you if not unfriend... Not that you are not a nice person but I see enough advertising to begin with.

The proven way to get people interest in your art, is by getting them interested in you! Make a connection and they will become interested in your work.

So the short of this is this... There is no quick and easy (post and forget) method that you can do and it will drive multitudes of people to your site with credit card in hand ready to buy. The best you can do is spend the time and develop connections (people) that will hopefully share your links to their friends telling them about your artwork...

The number one PROVEN sales technique is a happy customer telling all their friends about the wonderful piece hanging on their wall (or plastered on the back of their phone).

If someone finds an easy solution that is a post and forget, (I'm sure you wouldn't tell us...) but please share it... Because I would love to hear about it.

In the end at best you will have to change how you use Facebook and at worse you will have to develop a new way of getting in front of the masses.

Good thing I don't use Facebook.

Face Book wants members to buy their ads to boost posts and increase views. I have sold a few paintings I posted on my FB special page, but I can't tell whether my FAA shares to FB resulted in sales. FB is getting cluttered with so many groups, organizational, political, and news feeds that smothers marketing efforts there. It is a 'wait and see' what FB evolves into next year.

FB, like all the others, is wanting part of everyone's sales. They want you to create a following that you can't reach without them, so they can control you trying to reach your following.
So I pretty much just assume FB posts are buried. I see fewer and fewer posts on my feed. In fact, it's been several months this has been the case, maybe even a year. Even if you were willing to pay FB to let your post through it building their commerce not yours.

I decided that I would rather invest in developing my own site. It's a lot of work, I've spent abt $700 in hosting and plugins. But it's effort, money, and work I know I'm benefiting from. I just don't think any of us can afford to pay people to look (not even fb).

Truthfully, the only way fb will change its strategy is if people don't start paying advertising. So unlikely; there will be a lot of people that chase this goose.

So I only use fb for fb purposes, but I don't expect it to reach customers or even family anymore. I think the best you can do is be engaging in behavior and comments and hope people will google you.
-- mary ellen anderson

Here's another article about the Facebook changes and how to get around them
http://marketingland.com/facebook-kills-organic-reach-108160

There is another thread here on Facebook changes http://fineartamerica.com/showmessages.php?messageid=2192364

I think this might work to our advantage, we should put more effort into making the post interesting, on twitter, if I was promoting an aircraft image I used to put something like:

"Dakota aircraft wall art for sale "

but recently I've been putting something like

"How would you like to travel in one of these "

Because you're not saying what it is the readers interest is captured and they feel they have to click on the link to find out what you're referring to, it seems to work judging by the increase of visits to my site according to Google analytics.

Facebook is a joke and has been of absolutely no use for self promotion. Facebook will be going the way of the Dodo bird and My Space. I hardly ever post to FB for promotion and rarely for anything else anymore. The punk that owns it sees himself as some kind of Bill Gates which he is not. Since I have been using Twitter and Google plus my view count has tripled. So long facebook.

I think Facebook may go the way of Google, not MySpace. (But I could be wrong.) I like it for fun and keeping up with folks.

Jeff Folger
Well I wonder if our sharing of the image without a "BUY ME" on it will be buried.. If links get buried Facebook will be useless. I'm betting that it will be looking for key phrases like you posted up above. Install this, of limited time offer...

....The number one PROVEN sales technique is a happy customer telling all their friends about the wonderful piece hanging on their wall (or plastered on the back of their phone)."

Jeff's advice, I believe, is well worth following. So much so that I copied and printed it out for future reference. Have only a few weeks "experience' on FAA, but what he said I've heard from numerous other successful entreprenurial people (not just in artists) who will tell you nothing works better than good "word of mouth" advertising. Not that this is something most people on FAA don't already know, but some don't, and some of us tend to forget, myself included. Thanks to you, Jeff, for the reminder.

"The number one PROVEN sales technique is a happy customer telling all their friends about the wonderful piece hanging on their wall (or plastered on the back of their phone)." would be nice if you had a customer that could/would tell someone else they have one of your works on the wall. I don't like the intrusion of FB on my life - the wife uses it to keep up with her friends and a few relatives - I never saw how it could be used as a marketing tool.

I don't know if anyone said this but FB seems to be pushing this Shopify lately. I haven't checked it out but might be a good thing.

Val, which Shopify thing are you talking about? - This one seems rather expensive http://www.shopify.co.uk/online/pricing unless there's another one connected to FB

Interesting all the comments on how useless FB is for generating sales. My first 2 years selling my art/photography with little or no promo's or sharing my work with large groups on FB.... totaled $3500.00 for both years. The 2 years since that I have used FB to promote my aviation/automotive works....I now make that amount monthly. If you are just sharing your work on your home page to a few hundred people..then yes FB isn't helping you much at all. Some of the groups I share my images in have 100,000 or more members or followers. Are you getting that kind of exposure off FB?

-Peter

Interesting, Peter. Can you elaborate on your selling methods?

This is the one I see popping up...don't really know anything about it...http://www.shopify.com/facebook/sell/handcrafts/short?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=cpm&utm_content=80&utm_campaign=handcraftsshort wait might have to do that link over

http://www.shopify.com/

you it looks like the same thing...your right kind of pricey! I guess we link our shopping cart up there somehow.

Val, I think that site is more for selling direct to customers not via a pod site such as the FAA

Agree with Jeff Folger above.

Please be careful with shopify

My friend had it and could not get out of the contract.. meanwhile she was having to pay a LOT of monthly money out and making nothing in

Do make sure you are selling before purchasing that cart.

I found this article: http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2014/11/news-feed-fyi-reducing-overly-promotional-page-posts-in-news-feed/

It sounded to me like there was a little wiggle room based on how it's worded. The autoposts from FAA when we upload new artwork doesn't say "buy this" so maybe we'll be ok? If not maybe it's time to learn how to use google plus. I wonder how they determine what overly promotional posts are?

How would FB enforce something like this?

Are we already in that future world where FB has people reading every post and deciding which ones your friends should see?

Thank you Abbie...after reading a little more that $9 a month they use for a come on turned into a whole lot more!

Thanks Bill T and others who think I'm right... :-) Actually, it came from other artists that I've talked to and read their words (the current update newsletter from FAA had something similar).

I'm not making a living from my art but I bring in a little depending on the time of year.

My resolution is to get into 3 art shows in Marblehead and make it to the receptions where the people who are collectors want to meet the artists... Use social media as the tool that it is, but like Peter C. suggested. join a group with incredible numbers of people in them. 100,000? really? I've seen 20-30,000 but not 100k.

But that doesn't mean go find a group of artists of photographers posting images everyday... Find a large group with a like interest like Peter did and post top notch images there for them to see but without!!! any sales talk. Just talk about the image and let it go. if it is good enough then they will come to you... I think that is what Peter meant.

Good luck to all and Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays (your choice)

I'm trying Shopify via fb...but a 14-day free trial??????
Other outlets thru which I sell I have mapped-back to an
About.me page, so anyone interested enough in my
stuff can get it thru redbubble, crated, seenby, pixoto,
500px, faa (of course), zenfolio... very few seek to buy
via my fb feed, so I, for one, would not notice a difference.

I guess like car parks, fb hates "free parking on the road!!"
and so are likely to prioritise (and monetise) Shopify etc.

The 'free' internet is ever shrinking.

I have been trying to post to different groups on FB and I had a list of the groups I liked on the bottom left of my home page. I also had a section "posts to page" where others had put questions etc on my own page but both of these have disappeared.

Has this happened to anyone else? Has anyone any idea how I can get them back?

I used to just go into my list of pages I liked and work my way down putting a post on their page, now I have to look into my activity list to find them, it takes a lot longer.

@Gill you can also do a search to find your groups. I search by the word Art for example when I post a pic and select "post to group" and then search in that window and it pulls up all my groups with the word Art in them. Hope that helps. FB says it's about what people want to see,but I have a feeling it's really about them making money and forcing people to pay if they want their posts to be seen like for artists for example that are trying to self promote.

@Jeff, I just read your previous post before the last one and perhaps you are right. I'm wondering if it would be to our advantage to disable the auto post from FAA and post our own photo with a description and then manually post a link to FAA?

This is not new news form FB. The made this announcement some six moths or so back.

I actually see it as a plus for us IF you post you images the right way.

FB is a business and they have every right to ask for money from people using it to make money. That is nothing wrong with that. However, they are not targeting us as much as the out right blatent advertisers like those annoying spamers like RayBan and others.

Some months back I started three FB groups to help FAA members and I specifially said do not put a sales pitch in your original posts. But most people still do not get that. Maybe now they will.

If you make a post of an image that says yells out Buy Me! Buy Me! that post is going to seen as a blatant advertisement. And it is. And FB has a right to as for a piece of the action.

But there are ways around it.

If you DO NOT put a statement that turns the post into an ad, you can still link the image back to you AW with no problem.

As for the auto post of FAA, I have never been a big fan of that unless you are working form you AW and the links come back to you AW and not the FAA mother ship.

I don't how FB is going to treat those ads. The may seen as commercial advertising and banned or they may not.

I get results form FB. I know it for a fact. I am working a deal right now on one of my Signed and Numbered Limited prints that the guy seen on FB and the went to my AW and then sent me an email. This happened over the weekend and will probably close today.

I have actually had people post a question of how do they buy an item in the post. There is no doubt that it works, the question is do you know how to work it.

I use a specific format every time I post on FB and it works for me.

If you go to FineArtAmerica FB group you can see the format I use and have success with. All I say in the post is:
"From our Favorites Collection at FASGallery.com. Enjoy! - Floyd Snyder"

I usually say something like feel free to share with you friends and in your groups. Click on the images to see more details.

You can see it right now at:

FineArtAmerica Members Only

Notice there is no long statement made or commercial pitch. You have to click on an image to see the links back to my AW.

Facebook changes all the time. It is free so I try to go with the flow. Good marketing has a price tag.

When I first started posting my images on facebook, I was using the FAA auto-post. Several people messaged me that they didn't like it. Also, it seems the thumbnails periodically get messed up and look awful. So, I don't use it at all anymore. I post low-res images (900px--same as FAA sales page) and add the link at the bottom of the description. No negative feedback so far and I've been doing it that way for more than a year.

I agree that with changes are a good thing rather than a bad thing. Too often I see posts emphasizing that it is for sale, I don't really look at social media as a place to sell. I see it as a place to connect and share with other people which can lead to sales overtime.

I don't post my FAA stuff to any pages but my own; however, I do post images to groups and, despite some misgivings here by others, have done really well in promoting them. My "Doors of Lambertville" has sold 15 times at a gallery in 8 months and I just replenished the 5 that sold out in 2 days last week. And then, if and when I am asked about different sizes, I pm them the link to here.

I have sold quite a bit of things by posting them into groups on Facebook, actually. Those who say it doesn't work ain't doing it right.

Peter Chilelli!!!!

Bingo!

Facebook will not work for you if you do not work Facebook. And you have to work it right.

I have been preaching sharing... sharing.... sharing.... over and over again.... groups... groups... groups....

I stated three Facebook groups for FAA members based on the concept of everyone sharing everyone else s images and reaching more people then they can on their own.

A lot of people have joined, but most do not get the sharing concept. The just don't get it. And it is sooooooo easy to understand and to do.

Three Facebook groups for FAA members to post their work to

Go this article and read it. Then go join the appropriate groups and read the rules. This works... I have been doing it for two years. I make sales everyday here, some times several a day. Well almost every day. I do miss one now and again.

One is for all FAA members and only FAA members. One is for Western and Native American art and only W&NA art and one is for Seascapes and only seascapes. If you do both western and seascapes you should be in both groups and the FineArtAmerica group. You make one post and share it with the other two.

Same thing if you do W&NA art, join the two groups. Same thing with Seascapes....

But the key to all of those groups is everyone should be sharing everyone else's posts and there should be NO sales pitch in the post. Most other groups will delete the post if they see it as an advertisement. Put the links in the tags on the picture. Not in the description.

If everyone would read and follow the guidelines, your images will be seen buy millions and not just a few thousand.

I also sell on eBay via Facebook. I have sold thousands of dollars with of high end, limited edition prints on eBay via Facebook.

If Facebook is not working for you, you need to change your approach.

" Facebook Feed will be effectively "buried" in future IF it is deemed to be too promotional."

This correct and the group administrators have been doing that for a long time already.

If you expect your shared post to be accepted in other groups, they can not be advertisements. I have talked to dozens of groups administers and they made that very clear. Some have to approve your post before it posts. Others will just delete it if they see it as an ad.

@Jeff Folger...you are exactly right! Let's say the group is called "Fans of the B-17 Flying Fortress". Members post photos..art and stories. I will post one of my images without any solicitation and wait. Most often within minutes someone will ask if prints are available. Only then will I reply with a link. I may get 2000 likes and 600 shares on a really hot image world wide. I only started doing this when other artists on FB kept telling me I should be. It has lead to befriending many former pilots and crew members who are regular customers.
-Peter

I love fb & it's my main promotional tool. Especially with my portrait photography. I use Twitter for FAA but it still confuses me. I'm hoping these changes won't affect to much as long as we keep the posts from being ads. Like others have mentioned, I'm already seeing the affects if it.

I didn't use Twitter too much but had been connecting my FAA uploads to it, along with Facebook. Then in another thread, I read something Mike Savad had said that gave me that "ah-ha!" moment: To get more followers, follow more people. So I did. I still have extremely low numbers due to my own laziness, but lo and behold, some of my newer connections have retweeted my images. I also make sure to tweet them directly as well, so each upload is actually seen twice but I add my own hashtags the second time. Seems to be working.

Fastest sale ever from FB.

I closed on of my eBay Stores and had a bunch of loose inventory left over. I listed in on eBay and then posted the link to the listing on FB and went to lunch.

When I got back from lunch, the item had a offer on it. I looked at that tracking data the eBay supplies and 100% of the hits came from my Facebook posts.

The interesting thing is... the listing was a blatant ad for selling the products in the listing.

I posed on Facebook then shared it with just three other groups....

But people still try to tell me that you can not sell stuff on Facebook! lol

Usually Facebook posts a warning when change as big as this is coming and it shows up on the top of your business page with a date when the change will take place.
So far I've not seen any such thing. All the links I've read were not directly linked to Facebook itself. How do you know this isn't just another rumor started by someone sick of seeing the ads on their news feed?
It seems like a bad business move to me. A sure way to get Facebook to go the way of My Space through a domino effect of lack of interest, being fed up, not worth the money to boost a post, etc.

some quick googling turns up several links on this directly from facebook like this one: http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2014/11/news-feed-fyi-reducing-overly-promotional-page-posts-in-news-fee
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