Facebook Fan Page Parties have been popular for some time. They were a great opportunity for virtual assistants, business coaches, life coaches, and any entrepreneur to connect with other business owners and get greater visibility on the network. Many social media gurus and some business coaches were hosting them with great success (and some still are).

I started hosting my own Fan Page Party and was very pleased with the weekly participation. However, it didn’t take long to see the undesirable aspects to these parties. Many of these business owners  and marketers go around to all of the Facebook parties they can find and like all of the pages, hoping to get likes in return. I’m guessing that they probably have absolutely no interest in at least 80% of the pages that they like. Some of the parties even require you to like all of the pages listed (instead of picking and choosing).

Even so, this was still “okay” until Facebook changed the rules of the organic reach game. Then it left many of us “partiers” in a mess because Facebook has and is continuing to decrease the percentage of our fans/followers who will see our posts. Of course, they want us to pay now!

Instead of having the tight niche community of interested fans/followers, our numbers are diluted with uninterested marketers and product pushers (for example). What is left of our precious organic reach is being wasted and ignored in the news feeds of people who have no interest in our pages and will NEVER be ideal clients. To make it worse, if we pay to promote our posts to our followers, we are then paying for these people to see the posts in their news feed!

The best we can hope for is that they know someone who would be interested and they make a referral. That’s not very likely, in most cases.

Even before the recent Facebook changes to organic reach, I had become frustrated with the Facebook parties, as I was not attracting the right people to my page through these. I did attract some coaches through the parties, but my own party took on a life of its own and was not how I had envisioned it.

My original plan was to create a space for business coaches, life coaches, energy-workers, intuitives, natural health practitioners, writers, and speakers to connect and be able to share aspects of their business, social media profiles/pages, and joint venture activities. Now I have to come up with a plan to restore my page. It’s a necessity now, and it’s going to be a time-consuming effort. I could choose to start a new page, but I really don’t want to start over, so I don’t see this as an option. I can, over time, go through all of the people who like my page and check out their profiles to see if there is any information available to indicate what their business is and what their interests are. If they are obviously not a fit, I can remove them from my page. The only problem with this, besides it being time-consuming, is that Facebook will only allow me to see a certain number of likers/followers at a time when I do this.

For many of us, Facebook is still the place to be right now. It’s where I’ve had the most success and a number of clients have found me through my page. As Facebook continuously changes, we have no choice but to adapt and make the most out of it if we want to stay and connect with our fans.

We must use our time, resources, and money wisely, and aim to build a tightly niched following. In my opinion, Facebook parties – as they are typically held – will not benefit many entrepreneurs (especially those with defined target markets or location-based businesses) as we head into the future of Facebook.

Have you participated in or hosted a Facebook party? What has been your experience? Did you feel you actually benefited from participating or hosting them? Please comment below!