FB fans aren’t seeing your posts (solution #2)

Okay. So yesterday’s suggestion about re-acquiring missing page posts wasn’t enough. Fans quickly found that (a) they were already set to receive posts, and (b) still weren’t seeing any.

Today’s suggestion should work (or at least greatly increase what you see, albeit with a little more effort than usual).

This must be done by the fan—there’s nothing a page admin can do, other than share this blog post if they like, since that qualifies as a “legal” call to action in Facebook Land (as shared third party content).

1. Go to a page you want to receive posts from (hopefully, The 3/50 Project’s)

2. Hover your mouse over the “Liked” button to get the drop down menu to appear (which doesn’t always work). If the drop down doesn’t show up, try clicking “Liked.” If that doesn’t work, take your mouse off “Liked,” then try again. (Yup. It’s really that ridiculous.)

3. Click “New List”

Click image to see larger version

4. In the next screen, click “Pages”

5. Select the pages you want to receive posts from

6. Click “Next”

7. In this screen, name your list, and determine who sees it
HINT: If you’re someone who likes sharing the love, select “public,” helping all of us little guys to gain more visibility.

8. Click “Done”

9. Now, go to your newsfeed page. Scroll to the bottom left.

There it is. Your new list.

The catch, of course, is that  you’ll now need to intentionally go to that list to see posts.

Will page posts also begin appearing in your newsfeed? Doubtful. In fact, my fear is that if this takes hold, Facebook might decide none of our posts should appear in your feed—only in your list (that’s pure speculation on my part, so no blasting me in comments, please).

What gets my goat about all of this is:

1. Back in March, Facebook forced pages into Timeline, providing a big, flashy billboard (Cover Photo), then telling us we can’t use it to advertise or for calls to action (ex: Please like us).

2. Facebook also provided pinned posts for admins, but again, disallowed advertising or calls to action.  (The pinned post policy has been changed; thanks to JDavidbeatty for the heads up. You still can’t put calls to action in the cover photo—that hasn’t changed.)

3. And…they reduced fan posts to one line, in the right hand column, literally killing off on-page fan interaction. (That, I miss most of all.)

4. Over Memorial Day weekend, Facebook began showing admins just how frightfully few of our fans were seeing our posts, in spite of the fact they believed clicking “like” meant seeing us in their newsfeed.

5. A few days later, FB pushed the Promote button, literally telling us that if we wanted to reach our fans, we’d have to pay to play.

The popular argument is that if a page provides consistent, valuable content, more fans will interact, thus more will see page posts in their newsfeeds. Unfortunately, that theory doesn’t fly. If a page admin is good at crafting informative, interesting posts, fans don’t have to visit the page—they get the full impact from reading the post in their newsfeed.

Which suggests writing incomplete posts that require readers to visit the FB page will increase interaction, and thus newsfeed visibility (gee, how long will it take folks to un-like pages that make them do more work?). Sadly, pages whose content focuses on negative topics will do best, since ramping up the vitriol will inspire more fans to comment.

Or, of course, page posts can be replaced with nothing but outbound links to third party sites for videos and articles, which takes the viewer off of Facebook entirely…and pretty much assures page admins won’t need to provide original content in their posts at all. So much for the “rich content” idea.

There are those who challenge my frustration, reminding me it’s all about algorithms and EdgeRank (the technology used to determine which paltry 8% of your fans actually receive your posts).

True—but it’s not EdgeRank’s fault. Humans determined the goals and desired outcome, then programmed the software to act accordingly (saying otherwise is the equivalent of claiming it’s your car’s fault you took a wrong turn at the stop light two blocks back). The decision to make those of us least able to afford costly paid postings sit on the sidelines ignores the very thing that made Facebook great. It’s no longer about freedom and interaction and inspiration. It’s about money and market share and stockholders.

Which is the saddest part of all.

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If you feel Facebook needs to roll back this pay-to-post change, please click the Facebook share button below. If enough users push back, there’s at least a slim chance they’ll reconsider, having done so on similar initiatives in the past.