Too often there is an attitude that if your brand or company are on social media then you will gain masses of extra business. Generally this is far from true. Facebook have introduced a new way for brands to interact with users on the world’s most popular social network. If you already have a business page then you are probably very aware of the fact that the content that you post is only seen by a small percentage of the people that have liked your page. Page owners are constantly looking at ways that they can get more eyeballs on their posts and Facebook will now potentially show your posts in the newsfeeds of people who have liked a different page if you tag the page in your post, even if that user has not liked your own page.

If I wanted one of my business page posts to be seen by people who have liked Mashable then I can tag Mashable in my post and in theory my post will be seen by some of their 1.9 million followers. It appears that Facebook will be controlling which posts are shown to users to try to ensure that users are receiving high quality content in their newsfeed. There are different ways that Facebook can do this. They might only post your content to fans of another page if the post has reached a particular number of likes from your own followers. Or it could be that the algorithm works on a percentage where the higher the percentage of users that have engaged with the post on your own page will lead to the post being shown in a higher number of the newsfeeds of people that like the other page.

This sort of filtering will hopefully prevent spammers bombarding users with content that they have no interest in. Facebook is aiming at giving you quality content that you will want to engage with. The more quality content you find in your newsfeed the longer you will stay on Facebook and the more paid ads you will see.

I wonder how long it will be before somebody posts something to the newsfeed of a competitors followers. I am thinking of Microsoft’s “Scroogled” campaign against Google. Yesterday my broadband provider was having network problems, social media was alive with chatter from disgruntled users, I wonder if in the future when this sort of situation arises a competitor will immediately start posting content aimed at luring users to their own brand.

I can see benefits of the new system, if businesses are complimentary to each other then the arrangement could be mutually beneficial. A nailbar could promote to a hairdresser and vice versa.

The temptation for some page owners might be to go out and try to post content that will be seen because of another page’s popularity. You must avoid this at all costs. It will get you nowhere. What you need to consider is what type of content do you post and how much engagement does it gain? You need to post content that users are interested in so that they will like and share it.