The big news this week has been that digital publisher LittleThings has shut down, supposedly as a result of the new Facebook algorithm changes.
But is this the end of the relationship between Facebook and digital publishers, or could there be something new on the horizon?
I’ll tell you about that in a minute.
LittleThings have amassed 12 million followers – now the funny thing is that back in 2016 LittleThings they said, “Facebook loves publishers”, and the CEO said, “I think that we need each other”.
In the last couple of days they have called Facebook the “destroyer of worlds”, because they have lost 75% of its organic traffic due to the algorithm changes.
What does this mean for us?
So what does this tell us?
It tells us that we can’t put all our eggs into one basket.
As we’ve seen from the Google algorithm changes over the years, we’ve repeatedly seen that one little change has destroyed hundreds of businesses. And now Facebook are doing a similar thing.
The lesson is; we have to diversify.
I mean diversify everything – all our traffic sources, and even our income sources.
Listen if you’re into the online entrepreneur thing then you need to have multiple income sources.
But as bad as these recent changes are for publishers, Facebook might be rolling out more changes, and this time they might actually benefit us.
Facebook Broadcast Composer
Facebook has started testing the sending of mass messages, on a small number of business pages.
This is a feature called Broadcast Composer and it’s not publicly available yet.
It allows pages to mass message subscribers that have interacted.
Right now selected pages are only allowed to send messages to subscribers that have initiated conversations, but this might change in the future.
And at the moment there’s a cap on the number of messages that can be sent each month.
Facebook is allowing chosen pages in the US, Mexico, and in Thailand to test the application.
But they’re keeping a close eye on things because there is potential for abuse.
If the testing phase goes well maybe Broadcast Composer will be rolled out to all business pages in the near future.
You see, this is a result of recent stats uncovered by Facebook that found that 330 million people have initiated conversations with small and medium sized business pages since 2007.
Also, most business owners feel overwhelmed about making and using Facebook Messenger Bots.
So this could be a potential solution from Facebook to help brands connect and reconnect with their target audiences.
It’s a development that I will be keeping an eye on and report back to you guys with updates as they happen.
Take Control
Either way, if this technology rolls out or not, as entrepreneurs we have to drive traffic into systems that we own and control, like autoreponders.
That way you we protected from algorithm changes, we’re protected from third parties, and from corporations that don’t really have our interests at heart.
I’m going to leave it there before I start ranting.
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