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.
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I’ve started noticing that I can’t find pages that I like very easily in the search box either. They don’t bump them to the top of the list anymore like they do friends you know. I presume they are giving priority to “paid” pages.
I have a small fan base (~200) and am an educational office. I see the numbers and the percentages, but no promote button. I have always understood the reach numbers (previously only visible on the insights page) as people who saw my posts in their news feed because they were on FB sometime within a particular time after I posted, or because they scrolled down obsessively to see all the posts they missed since the last time they were on. I did not understand it as “newsfeeds in which my post was posted.” And I’m still not sure that’s what it is. Couldn’t the promote button be just about ensuring the post pops back up again in somebody’s newsfeed regardless of when they next log in?
Like Jennifer Wilson, I, too, have been using the “Interest Lists” for some months in order to follow all of the brands I must follow as a social media professional and for my nonprofit volunteer work. It works great! but does require a tiny bit of setup time from each end user. I hadn’t considered sharing this with our page’s fans, but now this post has spurred me to action. Thanks!
I am a veterinarian, and we have posted three times in the last couple of weeks about recalls of pet foods or illnesses caused by chicken jerky treats made in China. We were hoping to not only alert our clients who have Liked us, but also to alert their friends by our alerts showing up in their feeds. Most of the confirmed illnesses in the pet food recall have been in humans who handled the food — not to be melodramatic, but this is a case where restricting the spread of our posts could cost lives!
The only choice I ever get is “unsubscribe.” The drop down box looks as though it will have more choices when I first hover over it as the box is larger but is “empty.” The longer I hover, the choice comes up in a smaller box with the only choice being “unsubscribe.” ?????
i have an ‘organisation’ page with 1567 followers but have never had a ‘percentage of fans reached’ counter on there, does it apply to these pages?
Editor’s Note: Yes–it applies to all FB “pages.” The number and percentage appears on the lower bar, below posts that have published (can take up to five minutes to appear sometimes).
As a user, when I “subcribe” to a page by Liking it then I damn well expect to see that info. Otherwise what was the point of subscribing in the first place??? But, how do I know about pages that I might like to Like unless I see them in the sidebar, or from friend’s posts, or whatever? THIS in my opinion is where FB should focus it’s energy. Not in filtering you out from my feed, but in making the introduction between me and vendors I may like. Consider the cost of advertising as sort of a “referral fee” if you will.
BUT, also as a user what I do NOT want to deal with is being bombarded with all kinds of irrelevant adds and crap! So the trick would be for FB to use it’s skill and EdgeRatings or whatever to filter the ADDS to things which match my profile tags and to present only those to me, not to filter the CONTENT after the fact. This also best serves vendors by focusing your efforts on people who would be more likely to be interested, so effectively your response rate goes up, and that would be worth paying for, wouldn’t it?
On the other side of the coin, though, since FB does have 900 million users I have to wonder if filtering out content is the only way their servers can keep up with the volume of traffic??
It’s been said “whoever controls the media, controls the world.”
If is set up so only the rich can afford, not much has changed…
I had wanted to develop a page for Child Abuse including Historical Child Sexual Abuse which in Canada there is NO “Statue of Limitations” which needs to be revised and also branches out into so many other Abuses. Doesn’t surprise me in the least that “The Suits” are out. Money is most peoples God, controlled by a slip of paper. Luckily for me have only been on Facebook for two months. Although I’ve done a lot of work on it but easy enough to stop and redirect my efforts elsewhere. My targeted audience in general would not be able to afford these costs and neither can I. I’ll jump ship in a N.Y. minute. Another company will open and offer what FB used to, until they charge…and will continue in the same fashion as any other media and will probably want you to get people tied into contracts just like the phone/TV and Internet companies. People will do the same with FB,hop around for the next best deal. Clearly another separation of the have/have nots. Bottom Line is the Almighty Buck…and mine will definitely STOP here. Thankfully I have only invested a couple of months and have saved to my desktop so I can easily pack my suitcase and move elsewhere in “two shakes of a lambs tail.” See ya later, Bye!
what a complete and utter waste of fricken time…seriouly I have liked a gazillion pages (not really but you get the idea!) I do not want to have to do this for every damn one…
DONT FIX WHAT AINT BROKE!!!
I’m about ready to be done with facebook methinks
I think you guys might be missing something important here: Not everyone is actually on facebook when you post to it. So why would your feed show posts that, even though from a Liked fan page, that are hours, maybe days old? Consider different parts of the world as well. These Percentages might have always been the case and now facebook is actually reporting this information to you. I never expected that one of my posts would actually show up to every single user. Everyone’s facebook habits vary. So I imagine that the pay to promote model will simple ensure a higher probability that your post is “sticky” for longer. Would you really expect somebody who has, say 1,000 friends to see your fan page post if they haven’t logged in to facebook in a few days when their 1,000 friends have posted multiple times a day?
Editor’s Note: As noted repeatedly through the two blog posts on this topic and in comments, the percentage reached has no connection to if/when fans are online. It’s about which newsfeeds are even sent a post to begin with.
“Editor’s Note: As noted repeatedly through the two blog posts on this topic and in comments, the percentage reached has no connection to if/when fans are online. It’s about which newsfeeds are even sent a post to begin with.”
How are you sure of this?
Our Facebook page of 26,000 has been hit really hard these last two days. Before this happened our posts would get hundreds of likes, dozens of shares and a ton of comments. Yesterday it got bad. Our posts are only going out to 1000 – 2000 fans. Likes are between 10-20, almost no comments.
We posted a image to our wall and it got 7 likes over the course of the whole day. We placed the same photo in a photo album by mistake through the gallery upload tool… and it got 30+ likes in about a minute and 5 comments.
Facebook is highly limiting posts now. The only way to get on to people’s news feeds now is to upload photos to photo galleries.
Simple. Leave Facebook. People start online communities elsewhere.
I do love this moaning from people running small businesses complaining they may have to pay for their advertising. FB is free to use – they have to make money somehow if only to continue to provide the platform for you to use for FREE. Page reach has been rubbish from the day it started so nothing has changed other than you can now pay to make it better.
Pinterest/twitter etc are all looking to monetize their platforms otherwise simple economics will mean they eventually shutdown.
“Suz June 6, 2012 at 1:40 pm
Just so’s ya know…I delete friends and folks who spam me with product advertisements. I don’t want sponsored stories and people that send them to me will be removed from my lists. I go to great lengths to minimize the advertising content in my life, I don’t want more of it.”
Be careful deleting friends you think are spamming you Suz, because they may not be. Facebook uses your friends list to make ads ‘more personal’. Imagine you clicked ‘like’ on the McDonalds page because they were offering a free cheeseburger to everyone that did. In doing so you gave them permission to use your name and friends list, so your friends will see in their newsfeed “Suz got a free cheeseburger and you can too!’ or similar.
The worst offenders are the sports shoe companies…
For What It’s Worth –
I’m just a small time recreational user with a page that includes only my closest friends as well as a number of special interest pages.
In the past months and especially in the past couple weekes I’ve made changes to the way I’m willing to recieve updates on my page.
With personal friends I’ve had to reset my connection with them to where I recieve only their most important updates — I got tired of seeing their every activity (all their likes and comments) flood my page. Now, I go directly to their pages once a week or so to see what’s up with them.
With the special interest pages there are several reasons I will stop their activity on my page — and then occasionally go to their page and see what’s there.
Pages with hourly updates on their mood with regular shout-outs to their page owner friends.
Pages with updates more than three times a day better be incredibly important or interesting to me — Posting the same article 3 times consistently won’t cut it. No matter how gorgeous the images are, no matter how great the recipes or cleaver ideas are, when it’s more than two or three *every day!* they best be put into an album and posted once a day or they’re clutter on my page.
All that being said, I do email links to friends and page owners with info that I know would be of interest to them. The advertising isn’t a problem for me or for the people I know (though I don’t click on the link, I have gone to several of the websites listed).
I love your stuff, Lisa!! I’ve recommended you and your websites a million, bazillion times!!
My best — Chris Em .
I tried to do as you suggested but now when I go to a page that I “liked” and hover over the “Liked” button, the only option that I get is “Unsubscribe”, not the previous listing that was there a few days ago. On my business page, I doget the “x people reached” and the percentage but do not have the promote option yet. Of course I only have 141 likes, maybe I won’t bother to try to get more. I wondered how long it would be before FB caught on that they were providing a great marketing device for free.
I too have a page with less than 400 “likes” (literally, just under – 392), I get the statistics (x people saw this – y%), but no promote button…
just commenting this to try and help pad statistics
This does indeed suck! Thanks for your info on it. At least we can be aware of it.
I posted this on my page but it disappeared. And now when I try to repost I get this: “The content you’re trying to share includes a link that’s been blocked for being spammy or unsafe:”
Editor’s Note: Seriously? Is anyone else seeing the same? If so, not cool…definitely not cool….
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