don't fer~geet 2 fill IN yer fb (dossier) page Oops :0 hey didn't the "intel" folks "invest" in yer (dossier) fb :O lol "it's" fer the kids ?
by Joe Martino.
I write this as our FB page
with 420,000 fans only has the ability to reach a few thousand people
with every post; less than 1% of the fans we worked so hard to acquire.
When Facebook was first starting out
years ago, it was a great tool for connecting people. Originally aimed
at connecting students, Facebook was a means by which you could stay
caught up with old friends and acquaintances. As it got bigger, more and
more people were able to join Facebook, effectively creating a platform
where people could instantly connect with one another and share
information. Soon enough, communities popped up, people with like minds
and interests were able to share new bits of information easily and even
spread awareness about causes. Facebook became a huge tool in waking
people up to various things going on across the world as people in one
country could share what the media wouldn’t cover in another country.
Users were able to help change the world through Facebook.
Then Facebook went public. The moment
any company goes public something happens, money becomes more important
than it ever was. Now Facebook had to answer to its shareholders and
show revenue increases each year. They needed to constantly grow. The
unsustainable model that has destroyed our world in such a big way now
made its way into an online tool that was waking people up to everything
wrong with the world and what followed is extremely unfortunate.
Facebook began limiting what users were able to see as they wanted
people to pay for their posts to reach people. Most of this was done to
Facebook pages, but it affects everyone.
As the graph above illustrates, the more
money Facebook wanted to make, the more they limited users ability to
see what they liked on Facebook and the more Facebook page owners lost
the ability to reach people. Cutting organic reach from 20% of your
following to about 1% means that messages that matter can’t be shared
through Facebook as easily. Not only that, users are constantly upset
with the fact that Facebook keeps changing how their platform works and
having the user experience worsen as each month goes by. Imagine signing
up for a magazine that covered something you are interested in and you
specifically ask to keep having it sent to you and then suddenly they
only gave you access to things you don’t care about. This is the new
Facebook.
If that wasn’t bad enough, as Facebook
pushed out their new advertising models, they promised increased Likes,
reach or engagement from users should you decide to pay for it.
Personally we (CE) have tried this a number of times and the results are
so shockingly poor you can’t even believe they offer it as a service.
We’ve dumped hundreds into Facebook’s advertising models at various
points only to reach another couple of people or gain a handful more
likes to our page. How could such a model be sustainable? It’s not. but
it gets worse, later we found out that Facebook actually sends ‘Likes’
to fan pages that aren’t even from real accounts. Imagine paying for a
customer to engage with your content, but in reality that customer is a
robot and never will. So yes, your fan numbers might go up but that
account will never engage or view your content. Sounds like a bit of a
scam to me. Paying for something and being told you are getting it but
not.
Find out more about that below.
Once we even made a meme about how
Facebook was cutting organic reach and limiting what users could see. It
was a very tasteful meme with no profanity, just information. When we
tried to pay to boost this post, Facebook not only denied the
advertising request but they deleted our post all together. How’s that
for censorship? Facebook doesn’t even want users to know what they are
doing to them.
So what can we do? How can we get back
to sharing important information and messages with the world?
Unfortunately I don’t have that answer. Currently we sit with 420,000
fans on Facebook yet most of our posts only reach about 2000 – 5000 of
them. That’s less than 1%!
One option is to go to Facebook pages
you like and where it says “Liked” click on it and select “Get
Notifications.” This will ensure that posts from that page will have a
higher chance of showing up in your news feed.
When you are on that page, do your best to share as much content as possible to increase the reach of that material.
Maybe it’s time we create another platform? Or in a mass way force Facebook to change it’s model? What do you think?
You can like us on Google+ or join our mailing list (see sidebar) to follow us more easily as well.
Want to see how backwards Facebook’s model is? Check this out.
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