I’m seeing a few of FB pages I follow are using the “@followers” tag to share their posts.
I’m finding myself getting rather irritated everytime I open a tagged message to find it’s just a blanket post to all and sundry. It feels I’m being shouted at in a “come and look, this is so important” sort of way. Generally I just ignore them, but if I get a lot from the same page I’m actually unfollowing them.
I am becoming aware that they have been from shops I’ve followed as part of a mass follow-back arrangement and I’m probally not their target customer (the pros and cons of follow-back are a question for another day). It got me questioning would I be so irritated if it was a page I had chosen to follow because I loved the product, or was from a crafter I regularly interacted with (either here or another community group, or on another social media platform).
So, I’m wondering if I’m being unreasonable. Is this now considered good practice? Do others use it and find their customers appreciate being hailed in this way. I’m not sure I will use it myself as it’s not my style, but it would reduce my irritation
At risk of upsetting people I find it really irritating too! I must admit I’m not very social media savvy but this approach does feel very impersonal. I tend not to open these notifications. I do fit into the silver surfer category though
I have used it a couple of times as I have seen other pages using it but I tend to agree with you so I will not be using it again. My FB was hacked a year ago and I lost my initial page where I had a lot of genuine followers and interaction. I was very down for a while as I put a lot of effort into building it so I started another one, but I can’t seem to get anywhere with it so that’s why I thought I would use this feature, but it is irritating. I will probably pay for advertising and build it again this way as I can’t seem to be able to build my page organically anymore. I just don’t have the energy for it :(.
I must admit that I have unfollowed a few that have used it , as I couldn’t work out why I was following them to start with and had no recollection of interacting with their pages.
I guess it might not be so annoying if it was used to publicise a giveaway or diary dates from someone whose work you liked.
Ooh that’s is so awful, hackers (and scammers) are just flipping ******* . They just don’t care how much hard work and effort others put in, they just breeze in and ruin people’s livelihoods.
Building back, I’m not sure it’s just needing energy for organic growth, I suspect the platforms have rigged it so we have to buy advertising now if we want to break through the numbers game .
Definitely irritating - I unfollow them all when I can. There’s been a few I can’t unfollow though because I’m not actually listed as following them, either from my personal or my business account. I don’t know how this can be though - how can they do this , any thoughts?
This has happened to me but only in a couple of specific selling groups and they don’t use it very often so I don’t mind, I’ve never used it myself.
Given how FB have played about with what they actually show in our feeds (a large chunk of my FB feed seems to be sponsored posts and ‘suggested for you’ posts) I can understand why people who sell through FB group use the @followers function - if they don’t FB probably won’t show me their posts and I won’t see what they have for sale.
If it’s irritating you and you have no interest in the shop doing it then unfollow them - it can be quite cathartic to have a clear out.
I find it irritating as well, and have unfollowed pages for this reason. I also have a couple of pages that I follow because they are suppliers and I do like the products/blanks, so I haven’t unfollowed them yet, but I actually ignore the notification and don’t even bother looking at the post I was tagged on. Soon they will be on their way out though, as they use it daily and it is just not my type of thing.
I used it once to see if it had an impact on how well the post was seen, it made no difference and ive not used it since.
I find it very irritating and ignore the notifications other than for a couple of groups which I’m involved in as I know this groups are for genuine reasons.
I’ve never used it myself but I’m not bothered if other folk do, it’s easy enough to just ignore it if you don’t like it.
What really gets my goat is the silly follow/unfollow thing, I used to play along with the follow for a follow and like for like silly nonesense on Instagram, but the amount of folk who’d follow and then two days later unfollow drove me nuts, I follow folk I like now and lots of new Folksy sellers who don’t have many followers just to bump their numbers up, but I still get the odd follower asking ‘can you follow back’ knowing full well they’ll drop you like a hot spud asap as soon as you do. I’m too old for games like that.
Sorry to go a bit off topic x
Yes Lynne @PaintedHorseArt the blatent follow back cold requests are awful. I ignore those, but I have joined in with some mutual support campaigns to try and help local crafters. Some have done the dump-and-run, but even with those that stick around, we are not “really” connected in anyway apart from locality, so interaction is forced and eventually stops, so the only benefit is bumping numbers. So, I’m culling, and becoming a lot more selective.
I’ve recently linked up with a young crafter through a fabric destash site, who has only been sewing for a few months. With a bit of encouragement by email, she’s started the small sewing business she’s been thinking about for ages, set up all her social media, and has even joined Folksy. That feels so much more real than liking for a re-like.
It’s very irritating. I’m starting to unfollow pages that use it all the time. I also object to facebook showing me more posts from pages I don’t follow than posts from pages I do follow. I only follow pages I’m interested in and don’t do follow backs (apart from Folksy sellers as I’m always interested in their pages )
Ah…I didn’t know how are what was happening, I have had a couple of emails saying x person tagged me on fb or x person commented, I thought they were personal ones but when i clicked on it they wern’t, I have had quite a few recently in notifications but then it appears they are to everyone. The ones I recall as irritating are the ones I had emails about as they were supposedly to my personal account so had to change accounts, craft ones I have had don’t bother me though as they usually tag to Bearlescent
I hate those like for like games as well
I’ve never thought of unfollowing anyone online perhaps there are some I should though.
I think you can turn them off but I’m not entirely sure which setting it’s under. I just know I’ve seen people using @everyone in groups I’m in and have never had a notification, but I already have the majority of my notifications turned off, so I’m not certain which controls it. I know sometimes if you click on the three dots on a notification it will give you the option to turn off notifications of a particular type though.
@yorkshireharecrafts Facebook are getting worse and worse for that, and if I’m looking at my regular feed I’m now also getting it selectively picking a particular status that it’ll show me again and again (such as one from a friend 10 days ago that it’s shown me every single day since, rather than many other posts that have been made more recently). I hate using that standard view now, but if you go to feeds > all, you get a chronological feed of your friends and pages you follow without so many suggestions (there are still the sponsored posts though).
I get them too - but I honestly don’t know why FB have developed it in the first place. Back in the day, you used to post on your page and all your followers would see it - then they changed it (going to far in my opinion in the opposite direction) whereby they’d show your post to a tiny handful of your followers and if they interacted they’d expand the reach a bit more, then a bit more…until no one interacted so no one would see your post. Presumably making it harder so that we’d all pay for advertising.
What’s the point of all that if pages can just use these tags and bombard followers?! I don’t like it - I think the concept would be great if pages only used it for the really important/urgent announcements, but many seem to use it daily/weekly.
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