Facebook’s Promoted Posts were actually deployed over a month ago, but there were more recent changes in Facebook that made it relevant for users and people with fan pages, professionals, and hobbyists alike.

You may have already seen this. There is a post going around describing how Facebook is no longer sharing all your posts with your friends, and how you can get around it. Before we talk about the runaround, however, let’s try to understand this. What, exactly is going on here?

First things first, here’s the thing most people weren’t aware of: from the onset, you were never seeing all your friends’ posts anyway. Much like Google, Facebook was using an algorithm, called EdgeRank, to determine which of the posts from your friends and pages your liked you were going to see. Users who spent little time on Facebook, and those with too many connections, really do not get to see all the posts their friends make, and are already reliant on EdgeRank to keep them up to date on the things that matter. It’s something power users could take for granted, but was always there.

Facebook’s explanation, straight out of their Help Centre.

So what do Promoted Posts do? For one, Promoted Posts do not take priority over your regular posts on your friends’ feeds. What Promoted Posts do is extend the reach of your posts outside your network, to people who are friends of your friends. Promoted Posts have set limits so you will not be able to spam followers. Page owners were already using the old Facebook ads system to point users to their Fan Pages. This was just a better way of targeting potential leads.

Now that you’ve accepted that this will not affect your core experience as a user, you need to worry. The worry is not that Promoted Posts are taking over your feed, but that Promoted Posts are making the business of social networking more complicated. As some users have already observed, increasing the range and ability of Facebook’s Advertising system gives the advantage over to corporations with the money for bigger, longer, more expensive advertising campaigns.

Furthermore, many individual and small brands cannot budget for advertising at all, and rely on their fan pages and groups to promote. Making constant noise and oversharing can be an obnoxious technique, but it’s one of the few tools smaller brands can use to even the field, even as EdgeRank deincentivizes it. Although Promoted Posts will not have that immense impact Page Owners initially thought it would, it still tips the scales against smaller brands a little bit.

So, if you are promoting your brand in Facebook, what should you do?

Before Facebook’s clarifications, users looked for ways to get around the perceived scenario of not being able to see all of a Page’s posts. Although that hypothesis has been debunked, you should still ask your fans to do it. Here’s each runaround and why you want them to do this:

The first runaround – Show all in News Feed.

1. Visit the Fan Page
2. Move your mouse pointer to the like button and hover
3. When the drop down menu appears, pick ‘show all in News Feed’

What does this runaround do? What it will not do is override EdgeRank; older posts from your page still take lower priority to more recent posts. What this does do is tweak your fans’ personal settings in your favor. As much as possible, EdgeRank will note that you have priority and put your page’s posts on top of others.

What you see when you hover your mouse pointer on “Like”.

The second runaround – make an Interest list.

1. At the bottom left of your Facebook page, click on Interests.

-You may note that a feed already insists for Subscriptions. This will show people who have not friended you but allowed other people to subscribe, so you can see their public posts.

2. Click on Add Interests

3. Click on Create Lists

4. You will be taken to a menu where you can choose Pages, Subscriptions and Friends. Pick who you want to add to the list, then click on Next.

5. Choose a List Name and select Privacy Options.

6. Click on Done

This runaround is a little more radical, and not for everyone. Facebook’s Interests feature is a reaction to a Google + Circles feature, which allows you to see all the posts from everyone arranged in a circle. Facebook’s feature is not as well integrated, so if your fans aren’t particularly tech savvy or fond of users, this might not be the worth the effort! However, if your fans are particularly well engaged, this will ensure they do not miss your points, plus a tab gets generated dedicated to you.

Note that there are also other ways to make interests. If you remember that drop down menu on the Like box, you will remember that “Add to Interests” is an option there too.

Promoted Posts have not been fully figured out or proven effective yet, so if you are a brand with a limited budget, you will not be able to make use of them immediately. For the moment, you can ask your friends to use the first runaround. If you think it makes sense for your brand and you have enough fan loyalty, you can also use runaround two. Somewhere down the line, you may find a need to use Promoted Posts (for example, if new likes on your page have stalled), so stay observant and open-minded.