Facebook has slowly dismantled the things that have made Facebook Business Pages a great resource for a business to have. In September and October Facebook has disabled these features.
No longer can you use these two important items on Facebook if you are a business:
- Cannot send out a note to all your fans using the Facebook message system
- Cannot have a forum like exchange on the discussion tab – discussions are removed too
- Did away with the Facebook reviews tab
- Serious changes to contest and “like” building strategies – many things are now off limits
Some of these features went away as of September 30th and others on October 31st, and I have to tell you I think more changes are in store.
Additionally, fans now can block all your updates from their pages. In fact, unless they subscribe to your updates on their wall they may actually never see what you have talked about or shared through default Facebook settings.
For businesses these very important changes have removed the value of a “like” on Facebook. Additionally, Facebook is now allowing anyone, not just fans, to post on your business wall. So now someone doesn’t even need to “like” your business to have their comments posted as it was before.
You may still force people to “like” your page with a fan gate for the time being, but this will probably change as well. In conclusion, before a “like” really had value – you could additionally market fans with coupon codes and messages all within Facebook; building relevancy and a reason for someone to actually “like” your business. With the changes that are being rolled out it sure seems like the value of a Facebook “like” has lost its value.