This is a Guest Post by Craig Kilgore. Craig is an SEO with Mainstreethost. Craig has been practicing SEO for roughly 5 years with Mainstreethost. You can follow him on Twitter @ckilgs or contact him via email at ckilgore@mainstreethost.com.

If you use Facebook, you might be familiar with “sponsored stories” showing up in the right hand column of your news feed. Sponsored stories can include information from pages you like, stuff that your friends like, check-ins and a number of other things. Facebook is making some changes to how they display these sponsored stories (surprise!) going forward into 2012.

Facebook says this:



“Now with Sponsored Stories, you can increase the visibility of these powerful News Feed stories when they relate to your organization or business.”Sponsored stories will begin showing in your actual newsfeed

Similar to Facebook Ads, a “pay per click” type system will determine where your sponsored stories will display and who ultimately will see them. Below is a screenshot explaining how sponsored stories work:



















Below is a screenshot of what these sponsored stories will look like in your news feed (courtesy of TechCrunch):






















Facebook goes on to state that users will see no more than 1 sponsored story per day and that they will not have the option to opt-out of sponsored stories. These sponsored stories will only be displayed on the web version of their site for now with mobile sponsored stories likely coming in the future.


Here are the 7 sponsored story types (also courtesy of TechCrunch):


































Facebook users, be ready for sponsored stories to begin showing in your newsfeed. How will you react to sponsored stories and what are your thoughts on Facebook’s changes?

Happy Holidays to all!