By Sonia Majkic
You’ve all probably heard the news this morning, Facebook has banned Australian news content from its platform. [eeekkkk!]
Here are the key take-aways you need to know from the ABC:
- Facebook has blocked access to news for Australian users
- This would also prevent people overseas from sharing Australian content on the social media site
- Facebook have quoted “value exchange between Facebook and publishers runs in favour of the publishers”
As a result, Facebook [has yet again] done a huge purge this morning and deleted most news networks pages from the platform. But it seems their bots have gone a little too far and have removed government agencies such as The Bureau of Meteorology, public health and emergency organisations. [Hopefully this is just an error, right?]
News sites have been grappling with revenue losses since the monopoly of Facebook and Google entering the Australian market, however Google have struck a deal with the Australian Government in favour of media organisations, which will provide them with revenue in exchange for their content. But it seems Facebook have called their bluff and done the unthinkable!
What does this mean for business owners or marketers who use Facebook to sell products and promote their business?
Only time will tell, but here are a few possibilities:
- With an uncluttered newsfeed, the CMPs may get cheaper, resulting in cheaper leads [hello yes please, we can handle this]
- Or the opposite could occur, without news content being shared and read, overall time spent on Facebook will go down and your customers will be spending more time in other apps and on other sites
Nobody benefits from this decision, however these changes could also see a surge in new emerging social media platforms – which is perhaps what Facebook needs? Some healthy competition.
We’ll be advising our clients to get on the front foot.
- Facebook is the unpredictable middle man, and you should never rely too heavily on one channel for your leads
- Now is the time to own your customer data, get your CRM in order and obtain customers’ phone, email and home addresses
- Create a strategy around collection of data with tools like a lead magnet on your website
- Build a content rich email strategy to keep your client base engaged and your brand top of mind.
We’ll closely monitor the changes to Facebook and keep you updated.
Now is the time to speak to us about future proofing your business, so if Facebook purges your business one day, it wont impact your bottom line.
