If you want to reach your Facebook followers, you will have to spend money. Many businesses are willing to spend money to build their fan base, but balk at the idea of ​​paying to have their posts appear in their followers’ news feeds.

But if you’re not prepared to spend money to be featured in the news feed of your fans and those you’d like to be fans of, you need to question the value of your business being on Facebook.

A recent Examiner.com article put it this way: “Facebook stats show your business page organic reach is dropping like a bowling ball from a skyscraper.” And the only solution to this dilemma is for you to pay Facebook for promoted posts and advertising.

Yes, in the early days of Facebook it was relatively easy to get your Business Page posts to appear in your fans’ News Feed. Today it is much more difficult, and good content is not even enough for most.

For this reason, many business page owners feel frustrated and disillusioned with Facebook, feeling cheated and cheated.

What was once considered free, with the possible exception of generating likes on your company page, has become something that more closely resembles traditional advertising, at least in terms of having to pay to be in front of your target audience.

But the reality is that what Facebook has done to date, and just about every other social network, is build a market for its product. They have built their brand and they have done so by creating a product that many consumers love and many others love and hate. And they have done so by taking advantage of the free service they provide to the average consumer, monetizing the service they provide to businesses to reach those who use their service for free.

Of course, this did not happen overnight. This was part of their long-term strategy: build a platform that consumers love and use, give businesses a (free) taste of how they can reach this audience (think “lost leader”), and then once they the company has proven the exposure that Facebook can give them, gradually move away from doing it for free and pay to reach new and existing fans.

Okay, your initial plan may not have looked like this. But rest assured, they didn’t build ‘the empire’ so they could give it all away. They are not a charity.

As frustrating as it can be to discover that the Facebook fan base we’ve built is no longer accessible, largely without putting down some of our hard-earned money, it’s the reality and it’s the future. All the major social networks are heading in this direction, looking for ways to monetize their services for businesses.

While there is still a lot of talk about great content that gets you in front of your fans, I’m not convinced. Don’t get me wrong, great content is very important! But great content doesn’t guarantee that you’ll make it into the news of existing fans and others you’d like to become your fans. If you want this type of exposure, you will have to pay for it.