I have now had time to evaluate the affects of promoted posts since it release a few months ago. The impact is massive and negative to not only business pages on Facebook but personal profiles as well.
After considering the effects I have decided to boycott and do everything and anything I can to get facebook to get rid of “promoted Posts”.
Why?
Before the release of promoted posts a Facebook page could expect about 30 to 40% of their fans seeing their posts in their news feeds. The reason not all fans would see them is because they have so much coming across the news feeds that they just didnt see about half of your posts but they were still there (to my knowledge).
Now since the release of promoted posts a business page can only expect about 3% to 7% of their fans seeing their posts. and this same decrease has occured on the personal profiles as well.
I would love to know what your thoughts are and I ask that you go to http://www.change.org/petitions/mark-zuckerburg-facebook-stop-promoted-posts and read the petition. If you agree that this needs to change I ask for your help by signing it and sharing it with everyone you know because it ultimately affects every Facebook user! I also ask you ask anyone you share it with to share it with their friends and anyone they know.
Thank you all for your time have a great rest of the weekend! – Chef Ricky.

If you look at companies like coka cola as one example they have 52 million fans and are a well known brand they reach is showing 3% and I also stated that 3% is the average and sure even some pages like Sprinkle Me With Fans is still seeing 16% but not the 40 to 50% they were before promoted posts and if you track long enough on your own page you will see that percentage will continue to steadily decrease.

Thank you Melodie Licht for the support and sharing of our petition. It will take many of us signing it to even get facebook to notice there is a problem and that promoted posts is WRONG!

I have to agree, all the recent changes have not only killed my pages growth rate and interactions but also my motivation.
Finding myself putting less time and effort into facebook each month. The good thing about facebook pages was anyone could find success with good content and effort. Now it seems only people with huge budgets can get results.  
We have recently added a facebook app to our beta site that will be launching soon which posts game and scores to our users walls as long as they associate their facebook account with the profile.I think this is the sort thing we need to be going for now, user generated content that is shared by individual profiles rather than lots of time and effort on pages.
facebook may still be the biggest social network but it seems to be doing everything in it’s power to push businesses away unless they are willing to pay, but why should we? You can get much better results from real ad networks and promote using other completely free social networks.

@annfurnivall is right. This shows just one more time that we have to keep a base that we own (our website, blog). Facebook needs to make money to satisfy their shareholders. This is their main focus now. I already mentioned earlier that I don’t think Facebook is here to stay for a very long time. And with all their aggressive advertising tools they might go down even faster.

Don’t misunderstand me – I’m a marketer and I also use Facebook to promote companies and products. But I’m also a consumer. And both as a marketer and as a consumer I get worried.

Thank you Melodie Licht for explaining it better than I did as well as including a link to the related article.
As for Claudia Poeckl, Ann at greenoak, and Ian Pace, I I do agree there is a need for our own websites and forums and so on, but I also dont believe Facebook should be given up on totally either at least not yet. and there are a few work arounds with promoted posts but it does require not only more time but more effort. The main work around to Promoted posts is “Share” is it as effective prolly not but its better than sitting around and doing nothing.
Or you can even go to my website http://classycateringcreations.com/ and sign the petition we have started in an attempt to get Facebook to end promoted posts all together. Even if you sign it because you agree with it that’s not enough you have share it with everyone you know then re-share it again and again until we get enough signature that facebook listens and stops this whole promoted post crap.
With that I want to thank everyone for their comments, feedback and support for my boycott against Facebook’s Promoted Posts. Please share this topic with everyone you know its the only way!

@ccateringc just fyi, pages with several million fans have always seen low %’s.

I”m glad I’m not the only one who feels this way! I’ve been seeing our reach drop for months and it’s maddening! They only way I’ve been able to keep my reach up is to post more often but I’m not a huge fan of that because I don’t want to feel like I’m bombarding those few people we actually are reaching. As an individual, the promoted posts are infuriating as well. I can’t tell you how many time I’ve seen promoted posts or “pages you may like” that I have absolutely zero interest in. Needless to say, I definitely signed the petition!

@supereb en  how  are you advising  your   heavy  facebook using  business clients   in ways to   adapt to this  new  facebook situation?  and  why do you think the pictures are  making  the  views  go  down so dramatically ?  how are  your   dealing with this  for your  clients?    love  your insight!!!

i appreciate the petition effort     but  feel like if  this is  facebooks goal { to make  businesses pay, which is  very logical],  the  promoted post is  just a tool that  would probabluy   be  replaced if dropped….hard  to  believe they are  going for it on  your  friends  too tho…so  wrong!!!!

thanks  for  responding…..   i  didnt know  what your client  base was, but was hoping you had some real active  businesses  on  facebook    facing what im  facing..

..i have  kind of  done  much of   the stuff  facebook  and  the   thought leaders have said to do to market my  business.  and     have  been happy   with our  results 

…p.s..i  know its not the only tool……we have  blog, a hard working  website ,large e mail list,   but   facebook has  been a great tool for us too…thats why i like  this  network  dedicated to  facebook…

Good luck getting a recently gone public company to drop a feature that makes them a ton of cash.

You seriously would be better putting your time and energy into improving engagement on your page coz your partition is a waste of time and will not have any impact on if they keep this feature or not.

Sorry but sometimes you have to play by other peoples rules if you want to play in their playground…..it’s not fair but life never is!

I agree with @gavin-mace…

We need to remember that FB, from the beginning, never was a business platform. It has always been geared towards its users. From the user perspective, the current setup, while it isn’t perfect, nevertheless makes sense, and this includes the timeline feature that makes many a small business owner cringe.

There is a a hard core group that uses Facebook that will do what they please so long as Facebook lets them. These actions put the more professional individuals in a tough spot.

google plus is so far away from being anything useful to a direct marketer right now other than SEO (in which it’s incredibly useful).

But Facebook has a different advantage now marketing platform has ever given you.
You can be crazy targeted, wasting close to 0 dollars on fluffs.

I mean if I sell tractors with more horsepower in western germany, I can target Male Farmers in that area that have a thing for tractors (like) and add million other options.

Though the promoted posts I feel have a different point of controversies.

You paid (as a direct marketer of any industry) to get likes to be able to market to people of a specific profession, ethnicity, hobby group on facebook.

That’s really why you paid. Or I for that.

Now Facebook asks you to pay again and again for the same thing that you thought in the beginning was a one time cost.

Yet, because FB is still so highly targeted, it’s still easy to sell.
but my advertising costs on FB have gone up 20% because I need to pay again and again to the same people that I had already to be able to market to them instead of just having to pay for the interest sharing friends.

biased to me.

end line though, it works, with a lot of work, FB is right now the most powerful advertising platform there is, maybe not for much longer (ad saturation) but it is.aside from obvious spam software

Honestly, I understand businesses frustration with these changes, what was once free now costs money. Advertising is an investment none-the-less and Facebook is the most powerful branding tool we have at our fingertips. Since the addition of promoted posts, I have actually cut my advertising budget significantly and increased my user engagement. I am generating the same number of new likes per day (approx. 10) and my reach is still between 35,000 to 65,000 users on a given day. It is all about finding the best ways to capitalize on the tools in front of you. 
-Ry

@supereb @scottlinklater @ccateringc

Just signed your petition. Thank you for taking the time to set up and share.

Petitions likes this are important btw for many reasons one of them being increasing awareness. Always.

This is a ‘social media blog’, hopefully we are here to talk about social media issues such as this one, well at least some of us.

I posted about this topic a few times also and am very, very angry with Facebook and am similarly hoping for competitors to come into the market and offer us better solutions than Facebook are delivering.

Here are some actual things you can do in the meantime (other than the obviously stated and often overused ‘oh just make your posts better’ – this doesn’t change the fact that no one is seeing your posts).

Create a personal profile and use it for business. This goes against FB community standards but hey, we don’t have a chance and our hand is forced.

Merge that page into a business page once you have established an audience, but in the meantime use it to actually communicate and interact with your audience (if you can and it suits your type of business).

Create a website and stop putting time into FB and concentrate on your website platform. Facebook only second, third, or fifteenth to that. 

Hi @sheridanmills — I don’t make FB an important part of anything I do so it is not necessary for me to understand what their motives are.  G+ is so much better it is not even funny.  The order goes like this – 1-website 2-SEO 3-blog 4-tweak natural search 5-directories 6-ad pages 7-links 8-re-targeting 9-you-tube 10-word of mouth 11-email campaigns (maybe not in exactly that order) and after all that comes social media. So how FB works is not even in my top 10. 

 Hi @scottlinklater — Facebook can explain ’till they are blue in the face. The fact remains that small business must dig deeper into their pockets if they want full exposure at FB.  Not exactly a friendly environment.  Their intention is to make money, not help small business. 

.02 

Eileen

@sheridanmills  but why  cant you react with   your  fans?   my edgerank doesnt tell me anything like that…i can still get lots of  engagement… even the old levels  if i  dont use pictures……

…  you should  still be able to  connect with  many , even most of  your  fans….. 

im like you, facebook is  crucial, and   g+, irrelevant except for seo…my  audience is not there..and  they are on  facebook  BIG TIME..  i dont like the new situation either..but  i figure we better try to deal with this new  facebook reality…..

hopefully you  are missing  something a nd  can regroup  and    get  some of your  connections  back…. 

i hear   you…and i  think   some   of my  customers might be on twitter..i havent  heard  too  much  from my  peers(other stores in my  niche]  about using   it  tho…..

. time is such an issue with me …. and im in  great  contact  thru  email with   lots of them once a month….so im not really considering  twitter  so far…. @supereb  i feel so lucky to  have   developed   facebook as such a good sales  tool    i need to   focus on that   for now..and  when it  fades i will be looking  elsewhere and  readjust…also if i start hearing  that   lots of  stores are using   another social  path  well i would  change……. but   havent heard  that yet, from the stores……

I don’t think that they are going to drop the promoted post.  I have heard that they are testing out using promoted post on non fans/friends of fans, which I think is going a bit far and not beneficial to facebook at all.  Facebook will have to use promoted post as another revenue generating platform, as it is the only way for them to advertise effectively on mobile, which at least 40% of user are accessing their Facebook from.  I see both side of the coin, as people who paid or made an effort to get Likes feel betrayed that they have gotten so many Likes and now will have to pay for those Likes to see their content.  But if you think about it another way, it is like paying for sponsored story but a better position and a larger are, even better than premium ads, which is way out of reach for most small marketer/business owner.  But in the end, it call comes back to content, the more time/money you spend on content will transform into more engagement or into more of your content being seen.