Coffee Chat 4.2 with S.K. Anthony: Our Facebook Issues

Hey, everyone! Amazingly enough, I'm waiting for S.K. to arrive instead of finding her in my kitchen already (or my bedroom, or at the door, or any number of places). I thought I'd look through some of our old Coffee Chats to see what we've covered, and realized we never finished our coverage of the Social Media monster. I've been wanting to talk more about it anyway, since I'm having some Facebook issues.

SK: Oh hey, Lynda! Goodness . . . how many bath towels do you own? I've been stuck in your laundry room all morning washing them for you. I got here extra early and didn't want to disturb you, since, umm . . . you didn't seem too happy about me waking you up last Thursday. Hang on; let me get us some coffee while you tell me what's bothering you this week. I know it isn't me. I've been a good girl . . . so far.

ER: Whatwhatwhatwhat . . . do you EVER sleep? [Sees a pile of fluffy towels.] Hmm, this may not be so bad. Thanks for washing the towels, man. I owe you . . . something . . . unless you’ve already come in and taken it.

SK: No, no . . . I took nothing. I even brought you some bacon to make up for eating all your goodies last time. Look out the window!

ER: [Makes the mistake of looking.] Is that—?

SK: You’re welcome.

ER: There is a live pig in my yard. A pig that is walking around. A pig. Walking. I . . . I just . . . uh . . . [Sighs.] Thank you.

SK: [Nodding vigorously.] Yep! You’re welcome.

ER: I’m not really sure I want to know where that pig came from. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t legal. Maybe we should just talk about something else, and deal with my bacon gift later.

Okay, here’s what’s bugging me today. You and I both have Facebook pages, right? I've gotta ask: Do you have much success with using it as a promotional platform? Because I have a moderate amount of "likes" on my Easy Reader Editing FB page, but it doesn't seem like a whole lot of people actually see my posts on there. I have better luck when I share my ERE posts as myself on my personal page.

SK: Define success. If by that you mean I get likes on my FB posts from my editor regularly, then yes. I'm very successful. If not then well . . . sadly no. I've had a range of 30 out of my 1,121 "likes" on my FB page "seeing" my post to over 5,000 . . . it depends on how many shares I get.

Recently Facebook made about thirty-hundred changes on its "page" features. And that's in the past year alone. Do not look up the real number, I'm exaggerating by like two numbers—otherwise I'm pretty sure I'm close. Anyway, since they went public, pages have suffered because the FB peeps are more business-oriented and are in for the money. If you and I want to make sure our "fans" see most of our posts then we have to pay up . . . umm, NO.

ER: I’m not into paying for advertising on a free social media site, especially one such as Facebook. I am one of those people who completely ignores the column with ads while skimming the page for posts of friends or family members, and I’m going to assume most people filter that type of thing without thinking about it consciously.

SK: In past years it used to be free, and I think everyone saw everything, which made it one of the best ways of keeping fans in the loop and helped with promotions. Now we have to pay and keep our fingers crossed it’s not fake "sees" we're getting. This last change (which I'm sure will change by midnight again) says: "A person has to be 'active' on your page a minimum of three times within any calendar month period. This means clicking 'like' on one of our pictures and/or posts, or just leaving a short comment. If a person is not active on your page, as listed above, after a month of no activity, their 'like' will be removed from your page. FB has decided they are not interested in your page!" (This I'm quoting from a message going around FB; I have no idea who the originator was.)

ER: That almost sounds like something I’d find on Snopes. We should have asked Raymond about that, since he’s faster than Google. I just don’t see why a person has to prove he’s active on a liked page to see that page’s posts. Really, if I liked it, doesn’t that imply I wish to see the posts? This is why I don’t do the “I’ll like yours if you like mine” swaps—I only click “like” on the pages I genuinely LIKE. And if people “like” a whole lot of pages, how are they supposed to remember to go looking for posts that aren’t showing up on their feed? It makes me want to bang my head against the wall.

AND . . . AND . . . I need more coffee. I use up all my caffeine intake at a faster rate when I get worked up like this.

SK: Okay let me get you some more coffee while I scream: EXACTLY!

I don't want FB to guess what it thinks I'm interested in. I want it to show me what I told it I'm interested in. Ugh. Anyway, and since I'm not paying nor is hardly anyone else, groups have become popular. Authors, readers, anyone who has some kind of following are creating groups and keeping their fans up to date that way . . . except now the word on the street is that FB has caught on to that. Now, they're also not showing the feed and group members have to go in the group, much like into pages, to see what is going on.

Twitter on the other hand . . . I guess its great. I don't utilize it to my advantage as much as I should. I love that you can add hashtags and anyone looking for something specific can find your tweets that way. If I was more active with readers and friends I might benefit better. Sigh. I'm just going to give up on FB and create my own community and whatnot on Google plus. It seems to be the next big thing . . . unless they start making us pay too. I’m feeling sad now. I feel like I’ll have to break up with FB soon. What do you think you’ll do?

ER: I really like FB for my personal stuff, but it’s not doing me any favors for my editing. As long as they don’t start charging me to have a business page, I’ll just keep it. I ignore the sad statistics they send me each week anyway—the ones that tell me how many people are NOT engaged with my posts.

SK: Mind if I finish off this coffee? [Sees the look on Lynda’s face.] Oh, okay, we’ll share the last of the coffee. Relax! Here eat this in the meantime. [Throws chocolate at Lynda.] By the way, I think your piggy is hungry. [Throws more chocolate at Lynda.] Thank goodness I found some chocolate in one of your socks. Pheww.

Now that we’re both calmed again, I’d like to rant one more time: And it’s not like we can come up with a plan on what to do with FB since they keep changing things. Also, what’s up with the new look? I guess I’m getting used to it but there was nothing wrong with it before. NOTHING. Well, except maybe fewer ads from them. Ugh. Social Media! Love to hate it and hate to love it.

ER: I think the ad column is wider, and the design is ticking me off because I just finished adapting to the other change they made a year ago. I’m slow like that.

I’m pretty happy for now, sticking with Coffee Chat and my Monday blog posts (which I should probably apologize for completely forgetting about this past Monday). I would like to ask our readers, though, which of the social media platforms works for them and why. I don’t have enough time in the day to put effort into something that’s not making me happy.

As always:

You can find S.K. Anthony in a number of places. She's on Twitter @SKathAnthony, her website is www.skanthony.com, her Facebook page is S Katherine Anthony, and on occasional occasions, she'll be right here with me, drinking coffee and laughing it up over our latest plans and schemes. And possibly even talking about books and writing. 

You can find me here. I'm always here.