With Facebook, you get what you pay for

To anyone with a message to send or a product to sell, maintaining an active and connected Facebook page may seem like common sense. In many ways, it is — but it doesn’t stop there. Facebook offers several supplementary features that can push the envelope to get your business noticed.

In September 2015, Facebook rolled out a new feature; the “shopping and services” function, which gives visitors direct access to the products offered by the page’s administrators, as reported by the National Federation of Independent Business. This effectively creates an opportunity for transactions without visitors needing to leave a retailer’s Facebook page.

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This addition of shopping and services is only part of what Business Insider called “the biggest update to [Facebook] Pages in three years.” Facebook also introduced in September the “call to action” button, which allows potential patrons to book service appointments, browse catalogues and many other ways to interact with businesses. An added benefit of these changes is overall easier navigation and less scrolling and clicking, according to Business Insider.

New tools like these can be helpful, but one drawback is that the recent shakeups in the Facebook system also include updated newsfeed algorithms that will prioritize paid marketing content over organic marketing content, according to a blog post by IdioPlatform in September 2014. This means that if you want your message to be seen by the most people possible, the only surefire way is to pay Facebook to push your posts in front of more people.

Although it’s possible to engage the public on social media without spending an extra dime, Facebook has become, in many ways, a “pay-to-play” platform for businesses.

It’s understandable to be reluctant to spend money on what is traditionally seen as a free social media and communication tool, but the reality is that unpaid users trying to promote a business can easily get buried and outshined by promoted posts. If you get the notion that your web presence is lacking, taking the next step into paid social media promotion might be the boost you need.

Paid for or not paid for, Facebook is still a dominant force in the social media landscape, with 1.55 billion monthly active users on average in 2015, according to Statista.com. The more tools available to get the most out of the community, the better.