Excuse me for copying and pasting, I have just written this on another post and it relates to this one too!
My husband Mark has made a sort of decision this week!!
He is going to give up his job either in 3 months (ready for the summer) or a maximum of 6 months (in time for Christmas) not quite decided on the when bit yet) and then hand in his notice (he doesn’t enjoy it - conservation work has changed beyond all recognition from 10 years ago), this will mean he can do more marketing - as he is the better at it out of the two of us, Yay!
He also wants to set up workshops and be a consultant.
I shared a post @JoSara had done on her FB page - didn’t use any red flag words (like sell, gift etc) and only 12 people saw it. I shared again (deleted the old one) just saying" Welcome to the bee and butterfly cafe…" (lovely mosaic cafe sign which comes with a packet of seeds to sow) hoping that would reach more people - nope. One of the things I like about following other pages is when they share like minded pages I’ve not come across before, but it seems my page/likers aren’t interested in links. :-/
Has anyone else come across similar on their page?
Oh, thanks for trying Liz. I said this on my page the other day, whenever I try to share stuff from other crafters, Facebook limits the reach. But if I share from some of the larger more general lifestyle type sites the reach is fine. It’s very odd.
I find that if I post what I’m making on my page, fairly regularly (at least ever couple of days) then my reach is around 100-150. When I share anything else, including links to other pages and items I like, it drops to about 30 or less. I rarely get shares off my likers, only ‘friends’ from my personal page seem to share.
I’ve found that when I share other peoples posts (and the post is of one of their products, so it’s still technically a selling type post, but it’s not your product) the reach is quite small. But if I share a post which isn’t of someones product (like a photo of their studio for example) the reach is much bigger.
Since the changes my reach has really gone down.
I posted one of my makes 2 days ago and it’s only reached 13…
I get the feeling people just aren’t bothering to look at the page feed from their front page…it was so much easier when you you just clicked on ‘home’ and got the feed for your page, not your personal home feed as it is now…
I don’t like links to other sites that aren’t obviously peoples shops or websites because you can get viruses that way. My virus scan shuts down any dodgy links that I click on, but I think some people are cautious of being taken off the page. However, clearly lots of people don’t think that at all because my Mum is always sending me posts with links in to laugh at. Once again this comes down to what your followers are like as individuals, which is a knotty question.
Looks like we all have a problem in some respect or the other with FB. It’s a pity it is such a good way of reaching people (sometimes).
I agree that there should be some variety in posts. Don’t know about 70 % being “off-topic” though as I tend to un-follow those pages (mainly because the jokes and the cat videos seem to get recycled through every page on FB). I also find it annoying when some page owners try to foist their politics (with a small p) on their followers through their pages. Although it’s good to mix things up I would prefer to be careful with that, because, after all I want people to like my jewellery designs, so I think these should be the 70%.
I completely agree with you @SamanthaStanley about unfollowing FB pages that post ‘off-topic’ posts, I would unfollow them too. The key with the 70% non selling posts, is to post topics that are ‘on-topic’ and relevant to your brand that could be of interest to your followers. So the posts could be about a TV program like the Great British Sewing Bee, if you run a textile business, it could be post of a cute pic of dog doing something funny, if you sell dog collars, it could be a post announcing that RM are increasing their prices if you send your items via RM etc
The majority of info that I have read about social media, says that the rule should actually be more like 80/20 (80% non-selling, 20%selling) but that’s quite hard to do I think.
There’s quite a few articles about the 80/20 social media rule on google, the infographic in the link below explains it quite nicely I think.
That’s if you accept that your “job” is posting on your social media site. I really want to be making jewellery, not looking around for interesting photographs to take or suitable posts.
Say I make one piece every other day and I have to post about those to promote them. If you apply the 80/20 rule then I would have to find interesting and relevant topics for 2 to 3 other posts per day. The maths is similar for 75/25 requiring another 1 to 2 posts every day. Those articles are far more applicable to partnerships and small companies where the load of advertising is spread between two or more people or is the sole responsibility of a marketing executive. Perhaps this doesn’t seem too onerous for someone who can devote working hours to their craft. However, I have only a few hours a day to spend on everything during term time. Outside of term time I have next to no time to spend.
What interests me is that these are the organisations that FB probably wants to court, because they also have a dedicated marketing budget that FB can grab a share of. I can’t escape the feeling that people like ourselves are becoming more and more unwelcome there.
Ooh yes, and I forgot that I mentioned earlier that my stats suggest that my organic reach drops when I post more than once a day and I had anecdotal evidence from somebody else (not connected to Folksy) who has a very successful page but also seems to experience this.
I have some stats for the last few weeks. ~120 likers on my page
31/3/16 shared and pinned a post about my friend’s nan being mugged: 69 reached, 7 engaged
31/3/16 two photos and a sentence: 7 reached 0 engaged
17/4/16 two photos and a sentence: 100 reached 13 engaged
18/4/16 one photo (similar to above): 89 reached 8 engaged (actually made for a friend, so perhaps not a true reflection of stats)
19/4/16 one sentence: 4 reached
I’ve found that scheduled posts have absolutely no reach on my page
You have a few more followers than I do @bojanglies, but your reach seems to be similar from those stats. That’s a bit disappointing (for us both) because it means that those extra followers haven’t made a lot of difference to your reach and therefore there is no incentive for me to pay boost any posts in order to get more followers.
As far a scheduled posts are concerned, some industry analysts have concluded that FB is penalizing people who schedule their posts. FB denies this but I have seen stats prove they are, whether they say so or not. The same analysts have stated that using Hashtags and @ symbols decrease reach to 6% of your followers (again FB deny it) but it makes sense because it makes it likely the post originated on a competitor social network and therefore could be bad for FB.
Seems like a foolish idea to introduce the use of “hastags” and then restrict the viewing, but then maybe fb just wanted a bit of the twitter action.
I like to use it as a glorified photo album really. I’ve given up obsessing over stats - most of my likers are either folksy folks or friends, I have a couple of real customers who’ve popped up there, and that’s great, but what’s better is the referral of friends of friends. That’s when people buy from me on FB.
So I’ve given up on worrying about gaining any more likers. They’ll come. Or they won’t. What ever
(I had more than I thought anyway! There’s 157 on there, not 120!)
I’m on the twitter (where I rant about tv shows mostly…) and post the occasional make. (apparently I show my age by referring to is as “the” twitter.)
And I’ve just started an Instagram account. Which I already don’t like.
But then I don’t like new things…
I can’t take FB seriously at all. Not only do they choose which posts you will be allowed to see, this week they decided to do my “Liking” for me too!
I went to my Pages feed to see post after post completely new to me, which I had apparently already “Liked”. I changed my password in case I’d been hacked, came back the next day, same thing again. I reported it to FB as an error, and so far today I’m back to normal again.
What will they decide to do tomorrow? Who can guess?
I inadvertantly used the word ‘sale’ in a post yesterday. ear FB showed the post to 5 people rather than my usual 40-50, and gave me a message saying “I see you used the word ‘sale’ in this post - would you like to [pay me to] Boost it for you?”
