Facebook Overhaul Will Hurt Photographers’ Pages
An upcoming change to how Facebook manages its news feed will have a big impact on photographers who use business pages to share their content with followers and clients.
In a January 11, 2018 post to his personal account, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote, “Recently we’ve gotten feedback from our community that public content — posts from businesses, brands and media — is crowding out the personal moments that lead us to connect more with each other,” He went on to say, “you’ll see less public content like posts from businesses, brands, and media. And the public content you see more will be held to the same standard — it should encourage meaningful interactions between people.”
This change will hit the Facebook business pages particularly hard. For photographers who use pages to share photos and videos with their followers, they will see a lot less engagement in the coming months. The changes to the algorithm Facebook uses to disseminate content to its users will allow fewer photos and videos from photographers’ commercial pages from being seen on followers’ feeds.
An inside source at Facebook told me over the weekend that unless your business is spending thousands of dollars in advertising per month, your commercial page will “probably die a slow death.”
I’ve noticed less follower engagement on my Facebook page over the past 12 months, even though my number of followers continued to rise. Lately it seems as if it’s the same 7 to 9 people making comments on every image posted. I experimented with posting directly to my Facebook page, as well as auto-posting from my Instagram account. Same results. I suspect this will be a net positive for consumers of content – particularly of family and friends – and a negative for media, small businesses and creators such as musicians, artists, and photographers.
This change should continue to differentiate the primary roles of the two most dominant social media platforms, Facebook and Twitter, as the former steps away from its role as an accidental publisher and disseminator of news while the latter fully cements that claim. It appears Facebook will be the place to connect with family and friends while Twitter will be where you get news, information, and/or publish news, media, and commercial content.
Richard Bernabe is a professional photographer specializing in travel, wildlife, and nature as well as an author of books, magazine articles, and travel essays published world-wide. Richard is a global influencer is the fields of photography, travel, and wildlife conservation with more than one million followers on social media platforms. He leads several photography tours and workshops all over the world and is invited to speak to photography and conservation groups all across the globe. For more great information on new images, gear reviews, book projects, and photography workshops and tours, Sign Up For Our Newsletter.
I’ve noticed the same thing over the last few months, I’ve less followers on Twitter than Facebook but my Twitter posts reach almost 10000 and Facebook 2500. With interactions higher also on Twitter.
Twitter has been very good to me and my business: contact with media leaders, good engagement numbers, high exposure.
Facebook lost me a long time ago. I closed my account and never looked back.
I don’t want to open Twitter, but I would still like to get my news from Facebook. I’d like to rely on Facebook for personal and sharing my artwork with my art friends, and checking out their artworks
Bummer!
I mean really!! So fb can regulate what we want to see? Well i love seeing photographers post images of their travels, nature& other cultures! Its inspiring!! Bad choice fb!!
I assume Facebook will come with a solution that will cost money……
No surprise. I’ve seen this coming for the past year with low engagement on my page. Time for a new alternative!
Bad news…
How did people run photography businesses before facebook? do that
Do you know what the next big thing in social media will be? Anything else you would recommend in its place? Twitter seems to be getting hot again.
Even when I pay for boost posts, I find there is no ROI on my photography posts. Facebook seems to hold me hostage when I don’t boost as I only seem to get a few likes and very little engagement on my photos posted lately. Regardless, FB shouldn’t have to control what others see or not see. Time to move on to something else I guess.
Your experience is very typical, Liza. It’s only going to get worse now.
Even if you do good advertisement and you have thousands of people liking your page but you quickly realise that your followers never see any pictures you post , members of my family follow my page but never or rarely any post until I tell them !!
I have seen the same thing. The number of interactions on my posts are way down, but number of followers keeps rising.
EyeEm might be a possible network for photographers.
Clearly a different space than FB, but it might be something to look into.
I hope not. I consider my Facebook groups to BE friends. My photography and ham radio groups are in many cases closer to me than real friends or family as we share common interests daily. Not all my Friends and Families are into my hobbies that I like to communicate about.
I’ll wait and see. If Facebook lets us down I’m sure other sites will pop up to meet our needs.
We all may want to check out mighty networks for our business.
Would You Tube be worth it as an option for you? Apparently you gain via ads and followers on your video??
Don’t know, I’m just suggesting.
Totally agree! facebook is not working anymore, but anyway, I still have my fanpage and keep updating it. It is good for your clients to be visible also there