no shit Sherlock
Just logged into de:Facebook to share a link to the post I just published. And, in my Notifications, I found this:
No shit, Sherlock! Thanks for the unsolicited advice. Guess what? #1 reason 54 people who like the Honking Goose on Facebook haven’t heard from me in a while: Facebook ranking algorithms bury and hide my posts, especially the ones that contain links to external sites, and hold them hostage, and then threaten and cajole me by saying I can pay $$ to boost my post so fans of the page will actually see something I post. Fuck off, de:Facebook. I know exactly what that really means and I’m not giving you my money.
23 comments on “no shit Sherlock”
Honk at me:
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The Honking Goose 
Facebook sucks so bad!
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Mm hmm
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55 now. (i went & “liked” your page)
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Oh, thank you! I will update accordingly…
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So, a few hints about Facebook biz pages…
1- You don’t need to boost posts, ever. You just need to post more frequently. More posts will meanmore followers and the more followers you have, the more people who seeyour posts.
I am admin for three biz pages with three very different audiences and almost no overlap.
The largest page following is for a nonprofit organization that I am board member to; our paid membership to the organization is far smaller than our Facebook following, but our Facebook biz page has almost 4,000 folllowers and our posts regularly are viewed by 1,200-3,000 people (we post at least daily, but generally no more than 10-15 posts per week). We have never once paid to “boost” a post. The trick is to share photos and other articles relevant to your original material and occasionally link to sites bigger than your own following. So, if Smithsonian Magazine publishes an article relevant to our history material or Time does a study about something that will be specifically interesting to our followers (“52 Places to Explore this Year”-type piece that includes one of the museums we are on a mission to support, for example) then I link to that external article in a post on our biz page. Since those entities have larger audiences than ours, linking to their stuff gets our whole page in front of more eyes.
Also, you’ll want to set yourself up to receive notifications when someone likes/comments/shares on or from your biz page, then respond within a short period. You can comment or even just “like” the comment they leave for you. This increases your tradfic bc it tells the visitors you are paying attention and they get a notification that you responded, so they are more likely to visit again right away. Again: more eyes. If your visitor frequents your page, their friends start to see your posts in their newsfeed bc the friend who follows your page commented or liked a post.
For my smaller pages, I have similar results. My medium sized page is for my solo business. I have almost 1,600 followers and can get posts with an audience of 2,000 several times a month. But, you again must know what they like. I present first person hisotry so my followers love tonsee haitoric clothing (my own, such as new pieces as they are in progress of construction, or museum pieces from the same era, are very popular) and they like to see the places I go for presentations (I travel all over the US so I show them crazy road signs or “World’s largest pheasant” tourist stops or an excellent meal at an unexpected place. But again, I have to post regilarly and interact with the people who respond.
My smallest page has just shy of 150 followers. That one is tough to get in front of mornethan 200 people for any one post, but regular features (“Reason #xyz Why I love Dakotas” or “Sunday Sweeties”) get good response.
On all of these pages I have reason to sometimes link to my blog. But my blog has a tiny following and is mostly a place to describe my work and elaborate on concepts relevant to what I do and publish hints about my (related) work in progress and the research I’m doing for that eventual publication. But by having a robust following on my biz page (the one with almost 1,600 followers), any blog entry I write–which is generally fewer than a dozen a year–is seen by a lot more people than my handful of regular blog followers.
Another trick is to schedule your posts. You can draft several and then schedule them to post for you at designated days and times. I do this all the time since I know my audience tends to be people who work 9-5 jobs, so I post for 10:15 to 12:15 in my time zone which will be mroning coffee through lunch break in different time zones in the US, then I also post when I am up late (work from home so I am a night owl) but those late posts have a different flavor because the late audience is a different kind of follower.
I hope this helps. I know it can be frustrating but Facebook is free and you can work the system to make it do what you want it to do, but it will require patience, time, and consistency. It took me 5 years to get my first 500 followers on my fb biz page but two years later and I have tripled it. The more followers you have, the faster it grows. But I promise, even just a daily photo with a quick phrase caption will boost your audience on the fb biz page and then when you link to a new blog entry, more people will see it.
Good luck!
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Oh, my. Apologies for my horrific typos! I have injured my hands recently so typing on the phone is suffering from “fat thumbs” quite a bit. I should have proofread before posting.
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No problem.
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I’m happy to hear that FB pages are working for some people, including you. That does sound very effective. I have a lot of philosophical angst directed towards FB so I don’t care to put in the effort to make it work for me in that way. I acknowledge that I could if I chose to do so. And if I was promoting a business, I would certainly use a FB page as a tool. There is too large of a community there to ignore.
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The fb system of ranking “top stories” as opposed to showing posts in the order they were published, is simply evil. I detest it!
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It’s the worst.
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Yeah! You tell’em. Seesh, FB is so full of advertising, I have to go hunting for the people I actually want to read.
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Seriously
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I actually don’t use FB. I’ll tweet my posts, however don’t monitor my twitter account.
Aome of those FB folks are a bit crazy.
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Like you, I don’t use Facebook, but I do tweet links to my posts and also links to other blogs. I do monitor but then, my account is protected so only those who follow me can read my tweets. That gives some protection from the trolls.
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I have pretty much given up on my business page because I don’t have the money to boost anything! 😜 I share my blog posts in public groups and on my own timeline now – I used to keep my timeline open to just socializing, but not anymore. Business pages are a joke. ☹
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Well, if you change your mind, Melanie’s comment on this thread contains some solid, practical advice for how to get your business page working more effectively, without spending money to “boost” a post.
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Ah-yup! Buried is the word. I so rarely share on there anymore. I should or I should take it down.
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Yeah, I set it up because it’s one of those things you are “supposed” to do for your blog, right? But it’s not doing much good. I don’t want to delete it because of the 50 people that do like the page, but they don’t really see my posts so… Catch 22.
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As you know, I have a blog that doesn’t have a lot of followers but is fun for me. Trying to reach as many people as possible has never been my goal but of course I am always interested in expanding the readership. So one tool I have used toward that end is posting on Facebook, which i lovingly refer to as Faceschnook run by Suckenburger. I am mostly illiterate when it comes to using these media as I have always been print oriented and it’s hard to change that for me. Your revelation makes sense to me because my posts seem to get buried as well but I’ve always expected to be less than popular since my expressions, shall we say, are not aimed at what is called mainstream.I like to make fun of president elect Tweety, for instance, and don’t have much use for Democrats either. Someday I’ll post a photo of my lunch if I can get a camera, some really awful jerky, Hostess ding dongs, and a 40 ounce malt liquor all together at once. Screw those dweebs.
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Yeah, it’s not you, it’s them. And the algorithms are written so interactions on their platform maximize their own profits. It’s not constructed to benefit the users. You are right – screw those dweebs.
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😂😂😂 Savage.
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TY
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You’re welcome!
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