Facebook - can we help each other out?

Shop Talk Social Media
1

Hi all - I’ve had an idea, let me know what you think!

I thought it would be great for us to support one another on Facebook a bit more - especially as it’s so hard to get noticed on there these days. So, I thought I’d do a regular shoutout on my page for fellow Folksians who have business pages - basically if you leave a link to your page below I’ll do my best to give your page a little love. And it would be great if you could maybe do the same for me! (I’m https://www.facebook.com/photofairytales/)

So what I thought I’d do is basically share one of your posts or do a shoutout post on my page linking to your shop (using the ‘@’ symbol, not an actual url link as Facebook penalise you if you post url’s - if I post an actual link I always do it as a comment below my post). And although FB don’t really use hashtags, I thought I’d use the usual #folksy #folksysellers two just in case it helps!

I’ll give a couple of your page’s posts some attention too, because I know all that helps the algorithm! (Weirdly it seems that FB set more importance on emoji reactions, rather than just the thumbs up - so if you ever want to react to a comment and give it a bit more weight, when you go to like a post choose the heart/wow/haha type reactions rather than just the thumbs up!)

Because I’ll be mentioning your FB page name using the @ symbol you should get a notification that you’ve been mentioned - so if you want to come over and comment/react (remember: heart/wow/haha ideally!!), that would be lovely. I’ll make sure I like your page personally too.

I’ve just done one for Tina @DaisyWings - I’ll paste in an image below so you can see what I’ve done…

I can’t promise I’ll get to all of you, but I’ll definitely do my best - I was thinking I’d do it maybe once or twice a week. If you’d like a mention, leave a link to your page below - and if you fancy returning the favour for me that would be fantastic!

Sarah x

folksy shoutout
folksy shoutout331×794 127 KB

5 Likes
2

Hi Sarah, this is a lovely idea!

I’ve honestly been thinking about quitting Facebook for my business account - I’ve really struggled to build a following on there. I’ve got most of my friends following, some of them kindly shared to all their friends so I had a few more there, & the rest came from British Crafters days. My posts rarely reach more than 100 people with most of the likes being from friends & family…it can get really demoralising :frowning: I don’t know why FB is such hard work compared to IG! Don’t think it helps that I opened the account in October 18 - so after all the new privacy settings came in after the Cambridge Analytica stuff.

I’d love to get involved, both with you & also if others post on here I’d be happy to shout them out too. I might try & do it as a ‘shout out Sunday’ or something, means there’s one day that I don’t need to worry about content! I do find it a bit weird / tedious to be constantly talking about myself :rofl:

I didn’t know about the reaction thing so that’s helpful thanks, I’ll remember that for future!

I’m at https://www.facebook.com/OrukiDesign/
Thanks, Dee x

4 Likes
3

Hi Sarah,

What a great idea and thanks for sharing me, the support is most welcome. I will definitely return the favour. It’ll be good to give each other support over on FB as it’s so hard to grow on there. Not that I’m on there every day but I don’t really understand how it all works to be honest but I give it my best shot. :smile:

Thanks again Sarah. (Just shared your page on FB :slight_smile: )

3 Likes
4

Hi Sarah, that’s a great idea.
I’ve just started following you on Facebook and Instagram. I’ll try and remember using other emojis than thumbs up too when liking posts! :wink: :heart:

2 Likes
5

Ah, so glad you all like the idea!

I know, FB gets really depressing sometimes - I’ve gone through phases of just not bothering with it. But… I still come back to the fact that my target customer (ie, women, usually with children/families, aged mid 20’s-mid 40’s etc) hangs out there. Yes, they use IG too (just starting getting to grips with that the last few days!), and Pinterest, but FB is still one of their main social media places. So I keep coming back to it.

There’s definitely a weird algorithm that they seem to use in terms of prioritising posts - I think basically they show your post to a small section of your followers, and if they interact they show a few more, and it keeps slowly spreading. If nobody interacts then your post basically languishes ignored. That’s where all the gurus and experts start telling you to post engaging content (blah blah), and not talk about your product (are people really all that interested in my cat I wonder?), but be all subtle about it so that they barely notice your promotional posts until they’ve accidentally seen it, reacted, and bought it (yeah, right)! Oh, and never use any words or symbols that can be seen as promotional: no £ signs, don’t mention the word ‘discount’, ‘free’, ‘website’, etc etc - and definitely no links in a post (put them as a comment instead - even posting a proper official ‘post a link’ type post with FB isn’t great: they simply don’t like anything that will take you away from the FB site.)

I get that people like to see the human behind the business, but at the end of the day I can’t help feeling that people generally liked your page because they like your work. So hopefully, with bit of help from each other, we might be able to lift each other’s profiles a bit. And I can’t help thinking too, that most of the people that like my page would be interested in your page, and vice versa. So it makes sense I think to do shoutouts and mentions/shares (rather than just an old fashioned ‘like for a like’ which is a bit pointless)! I guess my idea came from the daily listing challenge here on the forum - essentially a group of people that undertake to like and share one another’s new items, and promise to support one another.

There does seem to be a hierarchy when it comes to interactions - in order, starting at the bottom, it goes a like (ie, a thumbs up) as the most basic, then an emotion (ie, the heart/wow, etc) carries more weight, then a comment on your post, then a share. And it also helps if you can get an interaction quickly - the sooner the better apparently. All fun and games!

I’ll pop back in a few days and do another shout out for one of you - I’ll probably just go down through your replies chronologically, so I’ll do you next Dee @OrukiDesign (and yes, it does help to know what to post on at least one day of the week - completely get that too!!), and then you Helen @Lellibellecards. And if anyone else wants to join in, the more the merrier!

And thanks so much for the shout out Tina @DaisyWings, much appreciated!

:slight_smile: x

6 Likes
6

Sounds great @PhotoFairytales . I’ll do some sharing too. Thank you x

2 Likes
7

This is a great idea Sarah.

Lots of people are in the same boat with Facebook and struggle to get seen but it’s still one of the best ways to get your work in front of new people. It’s by far the best performing of all the social media platforms in terms of sales on Folksy (for all sellers not just our Folksy page) - for example, in the last 30 days Facebook generated 59% of all transactions on Folksy that came from social media (Instagram accounted for 26%, Pinterest 7.55% and Twitter just 2.83%). So it’s worth persevering @OrukiDesign as it can work!

This article was written a while ago so some of the info might be out of date but there are still some really useful tips to try that can help improve your reach on Facebook - https://blog.folksy.com/2016/12/06/how-to-increase-your-facebook-reach

7 Likes
8

Great idea! I do highlight fellow Folksy sellers on my Instagram account - generally under the #followfriday hashtag and that is also linked to my stories on Facebook. But I’ve been aware that I could do more on Facebook itself - interesting to read that generally for Folksy, Facebook is the best performing social media platform.
Anyway - I’ll do my best to search out and like and comment on Facebook as suggested.
My Facebook page is www.facebook.com/heatherandhome/

4 Likes
9

My pleasure :slight_smile:

2 Likes
10

It is a bit of a minefield isn’t it?! I think I struggle as I’m not a big user of social media on a personal level - I keep in contact with friends abroad but don’t have a huge amount of contacts. Social media & promotion is by far the hardest part of this job, but I do feel like I’m getting there, & can at least now write & post something without spending hours stressing about it!

I have a task on my ‘list of all the things’ to go through & work out a proper strategy - at present I write a post on IG & then just share the same one to FB, but thinking I might need to stop that & do different things for each platform. It’s such a shame they have different algorithms - posts on IG continue to get likes sometimes months after posting, but as you say FB posts just disappear into the ether!

I do try & follow all the guidelines, like not adding links to the main post & not using certain words - it’s the engaging bit I’m not getting!! :rofl: Although it can’t be all bad as a couple of posts have led to sales!

So yes, willing to try anything at this point & looking forward to taking part in this. Thanks so much for suggesting it! One of the things I love about Folksy is the mutual support & feeling like we all work together. Fingers crossed this will lead to new followers & sales for all of us :grinning: x

3 Likes
11

Thanks Camilla - yes perseverance is definitely the key! If I hadn’t joined IG I probably wouldn’t have worried about FB stagnating. I’ve got nearly 700 followers on IG in less time than my 200 on FB…just makes you wonder what you’re doing wrong, then you realise it’s not you, it’s the silly algorithms!

That article is really helpful thank you, I’ll be sitting down & sorting a proper strategy that’s more tailored to my followers & their active times etc. I’m also going to learn how to schedule posts & sort out notifications on FB so I don’t miss any comments. I wish the privacy stuff didn’t make it so hard - I’ve had someone share my post yesterday, but I can’t see who it was to be able to thank them - so annoying!!

Hey ho, I’ll get there eventually, Rome & all that! I’m sure this will help :slight_smile:

2 Likes
12

Hi Sarah,

Such a lovely idea, I’d love to join in! I’ll go & like & follow your page now. I’m a bit lazy with my posts to FB & just use the copy to FB on Instagram! I’m @whimsicalbells on FB.

Thanks Lou

2 Likes
13

I’m still undecided about scheduling posts on FB - for a long time now I’ve thought that my scheduled posts seem to get a LOT less notice than the ones I post live. I do wonder if there’s something in the algorithm that recognises you’re not actually there when the post is published, so doesn’t bother to show your followers. Plus they’ve made it really complicated to schedule posts now! :frowning:

2 Likes
14

I’ve just done a shoutout for you Dee @OrukiDesign! xx

3 Likes
15

Aww thank you so much! Such a lovely post too, chuffed to bits :blush: I’ll make a start this week so will try & do one for you by Sunday. I need to work out my notifications too as I’ve had to go right into my page to see you’ve mentioned me.

Thanks for the heads up about the scheduling, I might not worry with that then. I find the rest of it hard enough as it is!! :rofl:

Thanks again x

2 Likes
16

Great idea and I would love to join in. Will do a share tonight and then more as the week goes on. I’ll start with you Sarah @PhotoFairytales but let me know if I have not done it right. Cheers :star_struck:

Heres a link to my FB page https://www.facebook.com/TreetopArt/

3 Likes
17

I just use scheduling when I want a post to go out at a certain time and I know I’ll be busy, but I do find it very useful in those situations.

I did one the other morning and it still got thousands of views, nearly a hundred likes and plenty of shares (…not my art page, I’m not that popular :sweat_smile:). Obviously I don’t know if it would have done better if I physically posted it myself, but the numbers didn’t seem any lower than normal.

3 Likes
18

I definitely need to do more on facebook but I find it so confusing. I just don’t know where I am with it & find myself having more questions than answers! :crazy_face:

Thank you @PhotoFairytales for the tips regarding links & emojis.

I’d like to add myself to the growing list of shoutouts:

Many thanks.

4 Likes
19

Great idea Sarah @PhotoFairytales. I have given you a shout out on my FB business page (and aim to do the same for everyone else).
I know what you mean Dee @OrukiDesign about Facebook. I have built up a 500 (nearly) following on Instagram in six months. 18 months on Facebook has returned a following of 160.
I have made sales via Facebook, but usually the sale is to someone I actually know. Instagram sales are more likely to come from a complete stranger. As Facebook is such a driver of Folksy sales, it would be foolish not to make the effort!

4 Likes
20

Ahh fab to see more people wanting to join in! Thanks Kim @konyskiw for your thoughts on scheduling - I’ll see how brave I feel at the weekend! Always a bit nerve wracking trying out different features!
Yes Chris @ChrisStoneArtist it’s hard going isn’t it?! I made a sale yesterday off the back of my evening post, but it was someone I know. However if I hadn’t put it on FB then he wouldn’t have known about it - & a sale’s a sale! Just need to get to some of those ‘organic followers’…here’s hoping this mutual shouting out will help :grinning:

2 Likes