You heard me right, I deleted my business’s Facebook page. I’m sure some people think this is absolutely crazy, since in the past Facebook has been a great way for small business’s to reach their followers. Not so any more.

The people over at Facebook have made changes to the way business owners are able to interact with their followers, and not for the better. They realized they could make money off of business owners by making them pay to reach their own followers. Pretty gross.

Years ago you could reach almost everyone who followed your business every time you posted on your business’s Facebook page. Lately, with all of the tweaks and algorithm changes, it’s been more like a 5%. Facebook announced some new policy changes that will begin this January which will make your reach less than 2% … unless you pay them to reach more of your followers.

You built up your business, attracted followers, drove traffic all by yourself using their platform, and now they want to squeeze every last dollar they can out of you just to reach those same people. Why allow yourself to be extorted?

I can reach just as many people, if not more, using my email list, which right now doesn’t cost me a penny. Sure if I go beyond a certain number of recipients Mailchimp will begin to charge me, but their prices are pretty reasonable beyond that point.

Mailchimp is the client I use to send out an entire batch of emails to my followers all at once. It’s easy to use, has nice templates you can drag and drop into, and does all of the hard work for you. Check them out if you haven’t used them.

Now if you have tens of thousands of followers, maybe Facebook is working for you. If that’s the case, just ignore this post. But for smaller business’s, it doesn’t seem Facebook is working for you anymore.

You can find an article explaining the Facebook changes over at the Wall Street Journal.