Some bloggers reported recently that they had had blog posts that autoposted to Facebook removed, with the note that the post “doesn’t follow our Branded Content guidelines”. It’s something that was tested last year with verified pages and profiles, but is now available to all page owners – Facebook have created a way to highlight when a post was influenced by a brand.
Facebook say they define branded content by the creator/publisher of content being influenced by a business to post about something in return for something of value. In the most basic terms, that means if a brand has sent you something to review, has sent you somewhere in exchange for a blog post, or has paid for a follow link, you should be disclosing it on your blog, but also separately on Facebook instead of just allowing your auto posting system to post the link for you. (Facebook also define what they mean by creators – celebrities, influencers and public figures – and publishers – brands, advertisers, marketers and sponsors – so this is something that bloggers do need to be paying attention to.)
First, you’ll need to request access to the branded content tool – head to this page, select the Page that you want the tool for and click send. You’ll get a notification within an hour or so to confirm that you now have access.
To create the post with the required FB disclosure, head to your page, and write your new post, including your links and photos as you want to, then click the icon that looks like a handshake.
In the field that says “With” that will pop up, type in the name of the business that you have worked with – if you already know the link to their Facebook page, you can paste that in there to make things easier. Click publish when you’re happy with everything, and the item will appear on others News Feeds (which you can then encourage people to like it to boost the reach of the post)
This is a great step for Facebook, and we have heard that Instagram is working on something similar – it’s great to see social media networks making it much more obvious when something should be disclosed!
