Ep 56. Meta's Verified for Business Subscription Saga: What It Means for Your Business

This Snackbox episode explores the new subscription model rolled out by Meta for Facebook and Instagram, dissecting what it means for small business owners navigating the pay-to-play landscape of social media. Kryshla and Clem provide a detailed breakdown of the subscription tiers, analyse the real costs versus the benefits, and discuss the potential impacts on business visibility and customer interaction.

Unsure about whether to invest in Meta's offerings? We've got you covered with alternative marketing strategies that could serve your business better without breaking the bank. Whether you're considering signing up or looking for other viable options, this episode is packed with critical insights and practical advice to help you make informed decisions and optimize your social media strategy.

Don't miss the visuals! Check out our YouTube channel where Clem shares her screen for an in-depth look at what Meta offers. Tune in to stay informed and ahead of the curve in your digital marketing efforts.

Read more about Meta's Verified for Business Supscription Plans on Clem's Blog.

Connect with us on Instagram and TikTok @madmarketingmums and tell us what you think about this episode.

Transcript

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Welcome back to the Mad Marketing Mums podcast. And for today's Snackbox episode, we are talking about Meta and it's new subscription saga. Now, Clem has been diving deep on this and she's actually written an entire blog post on it, which we will link to in the show notes. So you can go and have a read up on it, but. Basically what's happened is Meta has come out and they've started offering a pay to play model, a subscription opportunity for businesses for their Facebook and Instagram products. So Clem, take us through it. What exactly is the subscription model? Do we want it? Because they did this a little while ago, right? Yeah this is what I'd like to call like, we all know that Facebook and Instagram, which is aka part of the meta conglomerate is very much pay to play nowadays. So I'm going to say these subscription. Things is a little bit next level to that. And they have been out for a little while here in Australia and New Zealand. And they are now as well as Canada, sorry. And now they have rolled this out also to Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Peru, and France. Bit of a strange little group of countries, okay, whatever. It's obviously that they're trying to test out it's uptake and such. And, but I've. I feel that if they are rolling it out to more countries, it's because there has been some, maybe some success and they just want to have more data from other geographic locations at this point. Yeah, there's been no success. Or there's been no success. Yeah, because they haven't actually, yeah, they haven't actually published any data about the uptake of these subscription plans. What are these subscription plans? They are subscription tiers, essentially. Let's call them that. Where I'm sure that you remember when they started offering the blue tick. Yeah. on Instagram, especially where creators and businesses could just go and get the blue tick for free. They were offering it, going, Hey, just show us your ID, blah, blah, blah, you can get the blue tick. They are now for businesses as well as for creators who have not signed up for the blue tick offering subscription tiers that are priced from just a couple of coffees at 15 USD all the way up to 350. U. S. Dollars per month? per month per account. So if you have Facebook and an Instagram account for your business and you want to sign up for those accounts, it is for the highest here, 3 50 times two. My goodness. What's, why would you do this though? Because I remember when the opportunity to become verified and get that little blue tick came out. They were making all these promises about how you would actually get support if your account was disabled. There would be customer service, some other bits and pieces. That didn't really Happen, did they, from all accounts, I didn't sign up and get the meta verify because I was like, nah, I'm not wasting my money on that. And I know some people who did, and I've heard stories of people who did their accounts got disabled and they still received no customer support. So Yeah, so this time? let's have a look at what these benefits are. I'm going to share my screen and it's going to show you the tiers for each one. We can go through them. So if you are listening just to the podcast audio at home, and you want to see this, you can head on over to the Mad Marketing Mums YouTube channel, because we will have the video for this episode up there. We have video for pretty much all of our episodes as well. So if you ever just want to see our smiley faces. You can do but really handy in situations like this where it's good to look at something on screen. Okay. I see it now. Thanks Clem. So creators will only be able to sign up for that business standard, but this is what you get. Okay, so you get the verified badge, you get impersonation protection, which they say is they will proactively monitor for any other accounts that try to impersonate you. Okay. So that's what I think that question mark says. Yeah. Health protect your brand with proactive impersonation monitoring. You get meta verified support. So on the standard plan, you get to chat or email with Facebook agents. They don't say people, they say agents. Yeah. Really, you have to like, look at the words that they use with a microscope because I guarantee you half the time it's a bot. You get an enhanced profile, which let's have a look at what that means. You can add images to your links. That's it for that. Oh, okay. I saw, did that look like there was some kind of header heading image? Yeah, so I would say that is exactly like Linktree where, you know, where you can have the box and it's either got an icon or you can make it enhance and it becomes an image box that has a little bit of text and you can click it. So they're copying Linktree so that's just in the link. That's not That's profile itself. Oh, if it was on the profile itself, like that's cool. Nope. Yeah. in that, but no. Okay. So And the next thing, search optimization. Now they released these, they were rolling these out a couple of weeks back and a week or so before that, I, Adam Massary came out on Instagram, I believe saying that they are going to be working on SEO to help small businesses and creators. I'm fairly certain that he did. And I I think you can confirm that's the case, that they said that, right? Yeah. They've said a lot of things lately, yeah. have backtracked on, but yes, Have a look at, yeah, have a look at what's on the business standard plan. Search optimization appear at or near the top of search results. So essentially, just like Google ads. Yeah. Okay. That's just for the standard plan. The business plus plan gets you all of that stuff plus featured account. So have the opportunity to be featured in the feed and introduce your business to new audiences. So this is what that looks like. If you haven't noticed on your Facebook feed, you might see some of those. That is because they have paid for being a featured account. Then the next thing is you get to put links in your reels. You only get to put it in twice a month. Okay. So that's the business plus plan. And it goes all the way up to this 350 USD. Let's see if I can click through. Yeah, there we go. Can you guys, you can see that I'm Yeah. Yep. because I can't see your face at all right now at this point. It's So yeah, so With each tier you get a little bit more support so you can request a call from an agent when you start paying 120 a month the enhanced profile you can share up to five business addresses you get more featured stuff, you get more links, and then with these other ones, you get employee impersonation protection for only two of your employees. So what that means is, for selected employees, you have the, they have the opportunity of having the features of MetaVerified, including a verified batch for their individual accounts. Okay? And then you get customized messaging chat. Which I thought this was already the case that you could do in your business account, you could, organize your chats a bit and those profiles of people that do message relatively frequently. They've changed that because I used to use color coding and mine. I loved that feature and the flagging as well. So I'd know if it was like an existing customer of mine and then they really restricted it. And so I don't know that you can do it for free now, but it looks like they've added it into this For 120 a month, you can organize it by color. Yes. Yes. Now, with the 350 per month, you obviously get a little bit more. Such as active case monitoring on verified support search optimization, up to five employees on your impersonation protection, customized messaging chats, as well as an account review. So you get a semi annual access to a meta advisor who will provide guidance to improve your content strategy for your subscribed account. Okay. So this is actually available. So I, they must've rolled it out to another few countries cause there's Italy in here and the U S in, in this mix now. Which, mind you, the U S is probably where they're going to get the most amount of their data because the data laws there are quite loose. And it's also their biggest audience as well. So we'll see maybe if there's a massive uptick then, but this is what you would get for 350 bucks a month from a. Quote unquote meta advisor. So that's going to be what with the current exchange rate, about 500 Australian a month for not that much. Like I honestly give that money to, a content strategist to give you personalized ideas. Like it seems. Yeah yeah. So what does this mean for a small business? You're going to end up having Now, they're not saying you have to do this in order to be seen, but let's face it meta has been a pay to play platform. Both Facebook and Instagram have been like that for years. It's now pay to even remotely be seen, I would say at this point we already see that there's a lot less traction and reach and such on those platforms. As it is, I wouldn't be surprised if it got a little bit worse. Now I posted about this content on TikTok and I did get some feedback from a couple of people. And one of them in particular said that they paid for the verification a few months ago, and they have received zero improvement in performance. So they were saying paying has given me nothing, absolutely nothing. Now I'm anti meta already as it is because of the support they don't necessarily give, but they seem to think that, everybody needs to be on that platform. But the other thing is the customer service that they're claiming there that you will be receiving. Have you ever tried to reach out to, to, to Meta and Facebook? Yes. As my account's been disabled twice and I've had to try and reach out and you go around in a lot of circles, clicking one link that takes you to another, that takes you to another, and you just can't actually get through to a real person. I was fortunate the first time it happened, I actually, this was, and I've disabled this now, unfortunately. I logged into my ad account on my desktop and I started a chat through there regarding my Instagram account and because the two were linked because I had a business account I was able to get assistance that way, but that they've disabled that chat now, probably because too many people worked that out. And because there was a stage where everybody was losing their account for a while there, that seems to at least have calmed down, but yeah, you can't get in touch with anybody. And when they send you a message, it's all encrypted the email address that it comes from. So you can't. Go back to them, email them again, or share that email address. And I get why, but yeah. so there's a reason why it's this infinite loop of Stuff it's because there's not an actual customer service department. There's there is not a physical customer service department. They Historically if you go and look and search around Facebook forming a customer service department They only started publicizing that they were building one 18 years after Facebook started. So Facebook has just celebrated their 20 year anniversary last month. And they, there is still no word about when that customer service department is actually going to exist. I feel so sorry for the staff working there because they'd be getting hounded by everyday users who do genuinely need some customer support. And what business doesn't have customer support? It's so it's that, that just shocks me so much. you wouldn't pay for gym membership if the equipment didn't exist. Yeah. So why pay for a membership like this when there is no customer service department? At least they're gonna build one really quickly. They just they've just gone through massive layoffs as well in the last four or five months and all of a sudden They're going to go and rehire. Yeah. You know why this is happening now? Because the U S has just passed a bill to cancel tick tock at the start of 2025 I have a feeling that's going to be a very meaty episode that we're going to do all yes and as who is in the back pocket of all of the U S senators funding all of these campaigns, it is meta despite the fact that they have It's basically projecting right. Everything that TikTok gets blamed for doing, Oh selling your data, spying on you, ratty rah. These are all things that Meta has already done, and we know of. There's probably more that we don't know of. And or they've been convicted for various courts and tribunals. So it's Of course they're doing this because if TikTok does go away, that's a really major marketing platform for so many small businesses. And basically Meta can be a monopoly in this space. Yeah, so that's like the second reason why I would not sign up is because a like social media isn't necessarily free There's no such thing as a free lunch You might have a free account right now But you are in fact sharing your data with Facebook so that apparently so they could give you better ad experiences and blah blah blah But have you ever actually read the terms and conditions that are? You sign up with and that you agree to when you create your account. That's the world's biggest lie. We don't read those terms and conditions and they change all the time as well. They evolve over time. So like you pointed out before, they're very clever with the wording. yes. So here is the quote from, this is from Facebook. And then I'll read the Instagram one as well. You grant us non exclusive transferable, sub licensable, royalty free worldwide license to use. Any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook. Okay, so in connection with Facebook Messenger, that counts, for example. Because that is part of Facebook. WhatsApp is part of the metaverse, correct. That IP license ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others and they have not deleted it. Instagrams is when you share, post, or upload content that is covered by blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. This is all on this blog article. And I've highlighted it and everything. So if you want to read it, go ahead. But it's, again, it's the exact same thing. They have sub licensable. So they can sub license your content, anything that you post, to a third party. Now, most recently there's been in the news that Meta is being sued by someone because they sold for 120 million, all of our private messages through Messenger to Netflix Yes, I heard about that. for better ad experiences via Netflix. They are technically because of this wording, their argument, and then they're in denial that they've done it. But technically, the argument there is the terms and conditions are vague enough that they can. Because your private messages, even though you deem them as private, is still content that you've posted on the Facebook meta universe. Yeah. For me, I'm like you already have the currency that you want, which is my data. Why do you want me to pay you more? Or even pay you anyway? To have my stuff be seen. I don't, to me, ethically and morally, I'm like, come on that's a one sided business relationship. That's not the type of business that I necessarily would want to align with myself. So that's number two of why I would go hell no to these subscription plans. The other thing so as well as, you are giving them your data, you're giving them your attention in terms of them being able to show you ads, but we are also giving them content to attract people to the platform, to watch and spend time on that they can slot ads into as well. So we're paying in three or four different ways here. To have the privilege of being part of this platform. So if everybody withdrew their content, they would have no business. they'd have nothing. We won't say that too loudly in case someone starts knocking on our doors. Look over your shoulder, right? Oh, I've got my phone right here. It's probably listening to me. I'm reporting this straight back to Meta. yeah, probably but last but not least as well is like why would you want to pay for the prestige? We've seen this happen on X formerly known as twitter where they went and said, okay verification badge. You have to pay 20 bucks a month And what happened? The sheer number of spam accounts that were able to change their name to a legitimate business. and impersonate as well as get that verification badge. Just, it went through the roof. You couldn't actually believe who was who at that point. Yeah. Yeah. for a blue tick that now means nothing. There are quite a few influencers, creators, even celebrities that, they've built a really amazing following on their channels, that blue tick was their way of going, this is me. And now it's essentially anybody could go this is me, Yeah. it's submit ID and stuff like that. as a creator. Yes. But as a business, how are they, you would, I think you would need just your tax ID and an address. you might have to show where how you register your business and get that certificate. So here in Australia, where you go, what's the company called? I can't remember. You go register a business. Look at Yeah, Goodbye, Chrysler. But there's on, is it ASIC? The yeah, and there's also like you registered the business name. I think you have to show that certification for a business account. it's all public information though. Yeah, true. Look, and there's gotta be fraudsters. The other day I had someone impersonate my. Shall we social account, do you remember that? And they just ripped everything from my account. They popped it up. There was some typos though, which then obviously couldn't be me. Cause I'm a psycho about these things. It's so easy to do. So yeah, it's I, yeah, and I quite honestly, them saying they're proactive impersonation protection. How are how? They can't even control the number of spam accounts that are on Facebook and Instagram now. What makes anybody think that they're going to be able to be proactive about it? We don't even need them to be proactive. We need them to just be reactive when we send through a request or something like, Hey, someone's copying me, do something about it. Or, Hey, this content's inappropriate. Do something about it. That's all anybody's actually asking for. We don't expect them to tell us how to run our business, what content we should be doing. Yes, that's a nice to have, but we don't actually expect the platforms to do that. But just the basic customer service. Yes. That would be lovely. Yeah. So I think like in we're seeing a shift where yes, data is currency, but trust is absolute pure, just platinum that, that has a hold so much more weight nowadays than data that I honestly think that these subscription plans, how did I put it? Was it's like getting a ticket to a magic show where the only trick is making your money disappear. Exactly. Exactly. Yes. It's that Willy Wonka experience that they had in Glasgow. Exactly. Those memes. Chef's kiss. or the bluey one that happened in the U. S. that made kids cry. Cause some guy was in a onesie suit that's all it was like this. I don't think I would honestly steer clear of it and I would almost try and diversify if you haven't already done. In terms of your social media mix if you're a B to B, LinkedIn is your playground more than the Facebook could ever be Instagram, there's, there's TikTok. I'm team TikTok at this point. TikTok Notes is coming out too. That's in beta and that's slowly spreading as well. They're testing that out too. There's a bunch of other channels that we could be using versus paying to even have your icon appear in a featured feature that is just embedded with a bunch of mess around it that it's not gonna have any focus. It's, YouTube, of course, huge. And the best part about YouTube, of course, likewise with Pinterest is these are search engines. And so you can have content from months, years ago that is still performing and serving your audience. And of course your own platforms like start a podcast your website, your email list. Blogs, all of that stuff as well. I think it's really important to, like you said, to diversify and make sure that you've got some backups for yeah. When these platform changes happen and they're not necessarily in our favor. Exactly. Exactly. But anyway. you for that huge breakdown, Clem. I have learned a lot from this. I hope if you're listening at home, you have learned a lot. Of course, you make your own decisions and what's right for you and your business. I think from this episode, it's pretty clear what we think of the meta verification, but it? know. You never know, like they may live up to their promises and if they do that could be really great for businesses, Maybe these two skeptics here, right? gets a new therapist and he becomes like an actual decent human being, maybe, but Zach Muckerberg. Yeah. yeah. I would say something else that rhymes with Zuck, but yeah, no, I won't go there. This is a family friendly show. All right. Thank you for tuning in as always. If you enjoyed this episode, please and comment, share, and save our social media posts regarding it. Please leave a review or hit that share button, share this podcast with your friends, with your family, with your biz buddies, whoever's got to have an interest in marketing. And we'll see you next time. Take care and stay mad. Bye bye. Bye bye.