Saturday, June 2, 2012

Keeping up with Facebook

You might have already heard or seen this before, but if not, if you use Facebook (which is most of us), you should read this. We promise its not long, and there are pictures too! On the eve of its IPO, Facebook revised its advertising revenue forecasts because a large number of its users access Facebook on mobile devices (cell phones, tablets, ipads, etc.) and there are no adds on the Facebook app. One of the way Facebook is making up for this "lost revenue" is with something called Promoted Posts. In the past, it was assumed that if you "liked" a page, you'd see that company's posts in your news feed, but that's not the case anymore. Now page posts are reaching only about 5-20% of their fans. See:



(Click on the pictures to see them larger)

 
Facebook's solution to this manufactured problem- oh, and they did manufacture it with their algorithms:

 
Anyways, Facebook's "solution" to allow all our fans to see our posts, is Promoted Posts. We must pay Facebook, and the fee is based on how many fans we have. We have almost 7500, so in Facebook math that costs $30:

Some people argue that as businesses we're getting an advertising service from Facebook, and we should have to pay. We won't argue with that, the problem is that Facebook changed the rules of the game in the middle of playing, and didn't really do a good job of telling the players that the rules were changing. As a user, did you realize Facebook was determining for you, what they feel you'd like to see in your news feed? Yeah, probably not. There's another problem with Promoted Posts. By paying to promote a post, it will reach more of our fans, but it will also reach random people too. People who might not like us, or care about us. Its insidious, unwanted advertising sent directly to your news feed. You've probably seen it already- something in your news feed even though you haven't "liked" that page. Weren't you bothered by it? We were. Its an ad- something we didn't ask for. Your news feed should be yours- filled with the content you want to know about, not random ads. When we have to pay Facebook to promote our posts to our own fans, we're also contributing to more random ads on Facebook, and that's just not cool. So what can you do? 
 Well, we definitely don't have the answer. But here's something you can do. We're illustrating this with our page (obviously), but you can do it with all your "likes". Go to the page and hover your mouse over the Liked button:



You'll see a drop down menu appear:



Make sure the Show in News Feed option is checked. That's it. Its as simple as that!   Now, at Hero On My Arm, we only post when we're having a sale, a special, we have a new product to show you, and a few times a month when we upload new photos of the custom orders we've completed recently.  We don't bug you with tons of posts, or random posts (hey, everyone, what's for dinner?)- we only post things that you'll want to know and see.  So hopefully, we'll see you on our Facebook page {https://www.facebook.com/heroonmyarm}, and you'll be able to see us too!


Now for those of you interested, there is more that you can do to customize your news feed, keep reading if you want to learn more.

Above the Show in News Feed option on the drop down menu is another option, New List:




If you click here you can add pages (and people) to the new list you are creating:



Then you can name your list, and set your privacy settings:



Now, when you go back to the homepage, over there on the left, under Interests, there's you're list. If you click on it, you'll see all the posts from all the pages and people you added to your list!

 
Hope you find this helpful- happy Facebooking everyone!

 
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