Dennis Yu

Facebook deals a MASSIVE blow to small business

Yesterday afternoon, developers all over began complaining that they couldn’t create FBML pages, the necessary elements of custom landing pages.  The new rule was that you had to either have 10,000 fans or have an account rep, which means that you’re spending money on advertising.  We have some clients that spend $200k on Facebook ads, so it’s not clear what the threshold is to qualify to have a rep– I believe it’s around $5k a day, but that changes, and Facebook will not comment on the issue.

In short, you are either a major brand or you are willing to pony up money like a major brand.  If you’re not, then tough.  The catch-22 is that to have a fighting chance to grow to 10,000 fans, you need a custom landing page tab to allow you to ask users to fan you, insert videos, and perform e-commerce.  Overnight, Facebook has instantly zapped a number of businesses that were reliant upon their Facebook presence to promote themselves.

At the same time, a number of agencies and software shops such as Content Factory that specialized in Facebook pages are also in trouble. Even those firms that specialize in Facebook ads will be massively hurt, since without custom landing pages, their conversion rates will suffer.  Those pages that were fortunate enough to have already made custom tabs– their default setting reverts back to the wall.

WHAT THIS MEANS

If you want to play, you have to pay.  That’s pretty clear— unless you’re spending money, and a LOT of money, you’re not important. For our big brand clients, not that big a deal. For local businesses, this just underscores the risk of building your business on someone else’s website. You’re at the whim of their policy changes.  Keep your regular website by all means as an insurance policy.

If you’re a household name, you have far less competition for traffic now– consider yourself lucky, but also know that privacy is a major hurdle that Facebook is struggling with– and the timing of this decision is quite poor.

Advertising can still save the day.  When Allah giveth, Allah also taketh away. Sure, we lost the best part of Facebook pages, but we do still have some insanely good targeting on Facebook ads, where you can target down to the individual person.  As a test, I ran an ad targeting folks who live in Alabama, work at Content Factory, and are of a certain age.  Only one person in the world meets those criteria– and I bombarded him with ads that have his name in all caps.  You can still run your ads on your regular website and get fans using global like.

WHAT YOU SHOULD DO

Make sure you are running multiple sources of traffic and maintaining at least your Facebook page and regular (WordPress) site.  You never know when one company stumbles and another arises. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.  Facebook may reduce its 10,000 fan requirement– in the past, they had high minimums to choose a vanity url.  Who’s to say that they may change this rule once they realize how badly it hurts the local businesses that just can’t get to 10,000 fans?

Try out MySpace and Google Content to hedge your bets on Facebook.  The traffic is not as cheap, but these folks have been pouncing on Facebook’s missteps.  I’d say that this recent change is the most FRUSTRATING thing that I’ve seen from Facebook so far– far more than Beacon or even the recent privacy issues.  Facebook is a young company– some of the brighter folks there are probably lobbying to get this changed– and youngsters when they fall down, can often get right back up and learn from their mistakes.

Meanwhile, Content Factory is halting the small business page development efforts on Facebook and moving to other platforms such as WordPress.  Jason Calcanis and others are making a stink about Facebook’s recent moves and now deleting their profiles, gathering the masses to leave.  While normal for Jason to gather attention as such, he does have a valid point that when Facebook shifts its policies on pages and apps, as we have witnessed in the last 3 years, then your investment in Facebook is unstable.

How has this change affected you?

UPDATED NEWS:

Facebook has reversed its policy here, as we predicted.  The outcry was enormous.  One source told us that the move was to shut down spammers who were using landing pages to do malicious things. Thus, Facebook hadn’t considered who else would be impacted by that action.

Had Facebook not woken up, our plan of action would have been to continue making automated pages, just focusing on the profile pic for customization. As for advertising, this would have hurt us a bit, since sending users to just the wall versus the landing page tab would have decreased conversion rates. This disaster narrowly avoided points to the risk of sitting on only one platform. In our role as an agency, we have to be wherever the traffic is, so we have to consider organic search, maps, and other ways to get traffic for our clients. Some folks in the Facebook forum have called me ignorant and incorrect in what I’m saying.

If they read the notes carefully and understand the impact, even if we are allowed to still create a landing page tab but NOT specify the default tab, the effect is almost the same. Specifying your homepage tab is just like specifying what is the homepage of your regular site. You know how you can have many tabs on your page, including ones not in the first six that are in the >> on the right? Those are effectively invisible– and that’s the point here. Your default tab setting is critical, as your homepage gets most of your traffic.

Dennis Yu

Dennis Yu

Dennis Yu is co-author of the #1 best selling book on Amazon in social media, The Definitive Guide to TikTok Ads. He has spent a billion dollars on Facebook ads across his agencies and agencies he advises. Mr. Yu is the "million jobs" guy-- on a mission to create one million jobs via hands-on social media training, partnering with universities and professional organizations. You can find him quoted in major publications and on television such as CNN, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, NPR, and LA Times. Clients have included Nike, Red Bull, the Golden State Warriors, Ashley Furniture, Quiznos-- down to local service businesses like real estate agents and dentists. He's spoken at over 750 conferences in 20 countries, having flown over 6 million miles in the last 30 years to train up young adults and business owners. He speaks for free as long as the organization believes in the job-creation mission and covers business class travel. You can find him hiking tall mountains, eating chicken wings, and taking Kaqun oxygen baths-- likely in a city near you.
I'm a member of Blitzmetrics Academy and a friend of Dennis to boot. Not only is Dennis highly intelligent and full of great and creative ideas, he's also incredibly generous with both his knowledge and his time. Success couldn't come to a better guy. Thank you for all that you do for the world, Dennis! 🙏

Michael Pacheco

Marketer

Thanks 🙏 for being shining light in this industry. Love what your building for works overseas too network for jobs so innovative. Dennis helped me navigate having bad experiences with marketing agencies and doing dollar a day marketing which has helped my personal brand tremendously. Highly recommend.

Eric Skeldon

Founder at Kingdom Broker

Working with Dennis has been a delightful experience. After meeting him in 2015 I got to collaborate with him on countless occasions. His understanding for state-of-the-art marketing, his implementation, and his leadership put him into the top 0.01% of marketers and mentors.

Jan Koch

Ihr kompetenter Partner für innovative KI-Strategien.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Dennis for my podcast in 2021 and since then we have maintained a friendship that grows with each interaction. I have seen Dennis' devotion to his friends and clients firsthand, and our conversations often result in us talking about how we can provide more value to the people around us. He is someone whom I can ask questions on a technical level, and look to on a personal level. If you have any hesitancy about hiring him, get over yourself and do it!

Isaac Mashman

Help scaling personal brands.

Geez, where do I start recommending Dennis? First, he is an absolutely brilliant marketer who understands where marketing is today and where it's going tomorrow. He also has an incredible passion for the International Worker community. The lessons he has taught me from his almost 20 years of experience hiring International Workers have been immense. Most importantly though. Dennis Yu is someone who wants the absolute best for you and is willing to tell you the truth. Dennis sat with me at a point in my business where I was floundering but did not want to admit it. He asked some very straight forward questions to get me to admit my issues, highlighted the issues, and then helped me create a roadmap to success.

Atiba de Souza

International Keynote Speaker | Video Content Superman | Superconnector |

Dennis, which I had the pleasure of working with is one of the most giving, honest and tell you as it is person I ever know. The knowledge this man has is remarkable and he just gives it out freely. He is not pretentious and always entertain anyone big or small in the industry always willing to help. If you ever get a golden opportunity to work with him or mentored by him say YES!. You will notr regret Dennis, which I had the pleasure of working with is one of the most giving, honest and tell you as it is person I ever know. The knowledge this man has is remarkable and he just gives it out freely. He is not pretentious and always entertain anyone big or small in the industry always willing to help. If you ever get a golden opportunity to work with him or mentored by him say YES!. You will not regret

Nixon Lee

The PR Whisperer

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