Although I was never one to give virtual Facebook gifts before the social media platform shuttered that program in 2010, I can see the appeal. If I were a broke high school teenager, sending someone I liked a virtual bouquet of flowers might have felt like a worthwhile, appealing gesture.

Well, Facebook gifts are back, and they're no longer geared toward the crowd that finds little cartoon images of real presents endearing. 'Coming soon,' says Facebook, the introduction of real gift-giving capabilities to the service adds yet another way the company is seeking to monetize in the wake of its somewhat disastrous IPO last May.

From teddy bears to socks to cupcakes from New York's Magnolia Bakery, Facebook is set to debut hundreds of real gift options, letting users take their birthday and wedding well-wishes into the physical realm.

Designed around software built by gift app Karma, purchased by Facebook soon after their IPO, the program will also incorporate mobile payments into the system. With more gift-giving users keeping their credit card numbers on file, that should help increase the popularity of their other major monetization effort of 2012: paid and promoted posts.

Beginning last spring, Facebook began allowing business pages to pay to reach more followers. Most posts are seen by only 12 to 16 percent of followers, so the chance to pump an update's visibility to the top of news feeds has obvious appeal. The decision seems to have gone over well, in that there's been no public protest about the over-infiltration of paid advertising content into news feeds.

That could change. This October, Facebook added the ability to pay for Suggested Posts. It's a solution to the perfect storm of sidebar ads diminishing in effectiveness (General Motors caused a big stink over pulling out of their $10 million contract in May) and users moving to mobile, where there's less room for ads outside of the primary content stream. Suggested Posts allow companies to stick their content onto the news feeds of people who are not followers and have no connection to the post. A like button within the post will help them stay connected, if they're intrigued by the content.

Finally, Facebook is slowly rolling out the addition of paid posts for regular users, with some accounts being given the opportunity during October to pay $7 to make their posts stickier and last longer on news feeds.
Does this sound like good news for a small business owner, or is it just another bill to pay? Let's break it down:

PROS

Greater Visibility

This is the obvious one. If you have 5,000 followers, the attraction of reaching 3,000 of them instead of 300 of them is clear.

Analytics

Facebook is backing up their claims. When a page owner pays to promote a post, they're given statistics about the percentage of followers that they reach. By measuring success, it's possible to better gauge what types of posts are working for best of you, for both paid and unpaid updates.

Easy to Use

Promoting a post is integrated right into the posting process, next to 'Share' and 'Like' on the menu bar. Once you've paid once, you're in the system, and making a post visible to more followers will be a simple one or two click process.

CONS

It's Something Else to Pay For

If you're like most small businesses, your marketing budget is already being pulled in multiple directions. Allotting funds for Facebook post promotion will likely deplete money that was once used elsewhere.

There's No Guarantee

Paying for a post increases the potential to get attention, but it doesn't mean you will. The emphasis still needs to be on creating and posting engaging content. You can't substitute cash for being relevant in your posts.

Reverse Follower Effect

If paid posts begin to dominate users' news feeds, they'll become less likely to follow and like new company pages. They may even make a point to unlike those they've followed in the past. It's up to Facebook to control this phenomenon, and up to individual company pages to keep their content fresh, relevant, and most importantly, not annoying.

Do you think Facebook's latest moves toward monetization are smart? Do you see yourself spending money to promote your company with promoted posts?

Author Bio:
Tim Eyre works in the storage units industry, regularly traveling to see locations like this Fayetteville storage units yard. Tim is part of Extra Space Storage which has locations across the U.S., which are listed at Self Storage Facilities.