In addition to marketing Kentucky Lake tourism, my wife and I are licensed real estate agents.
Last weekend, she was working on a Facebook post with a link to one of our real estate listings when Meta basically told her, “Hold up. You’ve reached your limit on links this month.”
Then came the sales pitch.
Meta offered us its new Meta One business plans, with the options shown on our account ranging from eight links for $49.99 per month all the way up to unlimited links for $499.99.
Talk about being shocked.
And apparently, we’re not alone.
Meta has begun rolling out its new Meta One subscription system for businesses. According to Meta’s published pricing, business plans start at $14.99 per month, with its Advanced tier beginning at $49.99. That Advanced level includes additional publishing capabilities for links in organic posts and Reels. Some Facebook Pages and professional accounts are also being limited in how many external links they can publish without a qualifying subscription.
Importantly, this isn’t affecting every Facebook business page yet.
It’s not even affecting all of ours.
As of this writing, our real estate profile has been hit with the new restriction, while our other Facebook business profiles have not. Meta says pricing, availability and features can vary by account and region, and reports indicate the restrictions are still being rolled out rather than applied universally.
But I think small business owners need to pay attention to where this is headed.
We’ve Built a Huge Audience on Facebook. And We Don’t Own It.
Between our three tourism Facebook pages, we’ve spent years and thousands of dollars building an audience of close to 140,000 followers.
That audience has tremendous value to us.
But the uncomfortable reality is this:
It’s rented.
Facebook is a for-profit company. They built the platform, they own it, and they have every right to decide how it works and what they charge for it.
We can complain about it. I probably will. 😆
But that doesn’t change anything.
Facebook can reduce organic reach. Change the algorithm. Prioritize video. Deprioritize links. Charge for verification. And now, for some businesses, put limits on how often you can link people to your own website unless you subscribe.
That’s the risk of building an audience on somebody else’s property.
This Doesn’t Mean You Should Abandon Facebook
Absolutely not.
Facebook and Instagram remain incredibly valuable marketing tools for small businesses. We use them heavily ourselves, and we help our clients do the same.
The lesson here isn’t stop using social media.
It’s don’t make social media the foundation of your business.
Your website belongs to you.
Your email list belongs to you.
The content you publish on your website can be indexed by search engines, discovered months or years later, linked from other websites and increasingly surfaced through AI-powered search tools. A Facebook post, on the other hand, exists inside an ecosystem whose rules you don’t control.
Social media should be one of the roads leading people to your business.
It shouldn’t be your business.
Own Something
‘ve been preaching the importance of owned marketing channels for years, but this is probably the clearest example I’ve seen of why they matter.
Build your Facebook audience.
Grow your Instagram.
Run ads.
Post the Reels.
Absolutely take advantage of those platforms while they’re useful to your business.
But also build your website. Work on your search presence. Grow an email list. Publish useful content. Give your customers a way to stay connected with you that doesn’t depend entirely on whether Meta changes the rules next Tuesday.
Because eventually, every platform changes something.
This time, it might be links.
And for a whole lot of small businesses, that’s a pretty big something.
