It comes at no surprise to anyone (except me!) that Facebook is going to roll out new changes to their platform beginning in 2015. But what might surprise some is how it will impact your business on the social media giant. Surprise!

First of all, I am talking about writers and writing related businesses here. I am not too sure how to connect the dots to another sort of business but y’all follow along and maybe we can figure it out together.

So, what are the changes?
1. Wants to filter out unpaid promotional material in user news feeds that businesses have posted as status updates – meaning, they want to get rid of unpaid promotions. IF you ain’t buying their paid ads, you will be touting your wares to an empty stage. If you can tout them at all.

2. If you post free marketing pitches or reuse content from existing ads – you will suffer “a significant decrease in distribution” – meaning, you won’t even get anyone to read your post

3. Any post that “hints” of promo or giveaway or gift offers will be dinged and likely banned. Not sure how they will do this yet, but believe me, book sales from this social media site will be virtually non-existent if they exist anymore anyway.

So what are we to do? I mean, I am like you dear reader. I am a writer who uses Facebook to promote my work, my podcast, my friends who are also writers – and if they take that away I will be gone too. Sad to say, but I will not be found much on Facebook. Why would I invest all my time on a site that won’t allow me to promote myself?

Here are a few things that came to mind that we might try if we are still even interested in trying.

1. Move your promo time back to your blog. This is what I am going to do. I am going on a wild blitz to get subscribers to my site so that true fans and followers can hear all the latest and not miss a thing.

2. Move to a different social media site for your promo. Pinterest and Twitter have my vote. I use them already and have a lot of love there.

3. Learn how to get around the Facebook changes. There might be a way to work around these changes. Someone smarter than I will have to figure it out though. I am too tired of FB and all their craziness to care anymore.

I thought maybe I would invest more time and energy in G+ if this all turned sour, but I hear they are thinking of doing the same thing. Can you imagine what life will be like if ALL social media sites turn to such a model? We will be selling from our websites and using our email lists and sending out newsletters… like… LIKE… we did ten or fifteen years ago! Guess it wasn’t such a bad thing after all, huh?