Why the Facebook Sky ISN’T Falling!

I see it all the time, page owners posting updates along the line of you can’t seeeee me any more, why you no liiiiike me, damn you Facebook for my non-interactive page. Look, I’m going to call it and say, yes there have been changes, but no, the sky is NOT falling. I’m going to acknowledge that I’ve been there. I put my whiny voice on with the best of them. I was frustrated, wondered why they would DO this to me and all that. But heck, it’s like anything online, nothing ever stays the same. Keep moving or get left behind. I think that the key now is to be even MORE interesting than you were before, MORE interactive and MORE present.

I’ve been developing this theory for a while. It’s like Facebook set out to make us TRY harder. At the moment my page has just under 1,300 likes, so small fry by a lot of scales. But the thing that makes my page a community of interactive and super cool people is that  we have a talking about score that hovers round 400+. I’m not so crash hot at maths but the percentage is pretty high. It’s a pretty good report card for those playing at home.

So let me tell you about how.

You see, the creator of The Stay at Home Mum lives in my town. Right here, over the hill in fact. So country  I know. Some of you would know the Stay at Home Mum, right? They just hit over 100,000 likes on their Facebook page. Them. Well it was a while ago that I suggested we have lunch or a coffee. Tell me about Facebook I said. Hook a Suger up. My page was sitting around 500 likes and hadn’t moved in a while. Talking about was looooow at best. She told me to do some things with my page to get interaction rolling and I’m going to share them with you. Maybe it’s something you can replicate for yourself. Maybe not. Maybe you just prefer to cry about the sky falling. You choose. HA.

1. Be consistent – Set a rough schedule of times you want to post stuff and stick to it. have regular updates and continuing posting along similar lines every day. It doesn’t mean consistently asking the same things, just posting post links or a photo of yourself {guilty!}. It’s a numbers game, the more regular your pots, the more chances you have to be in front of people and more regular opportunities they have to interact with you.
2. Be interesting – Ok this one is a tough one. But you have to be interesting  I see it all the time page updates that say sorry for being absent or boring or whatever. Errr, stop reminding that I had planned to unlike your page and hadn’t gotten around to it. Make EACH update worth something to the reader. Often on my page I ask questions, because I’m a curious nerd. I love to post photos and funny things I find, I share links and photo links to my posts and other people’s links. Keep changing it up and if people WANT to interact with something that you’re doing, consider that THAT is what is interesting to them. Maybe do that again.
3. Be interactive – On the Stay at Home Mum page at the time they liked {as an acknowledgement} every single comment and post. Sure by this stage it took a team to manage, but they made sure every single person who went to the trouble of interacting felt like they were being interacted WITH. That is, the point after all. Facebook is designed for that.
4. Be ahead of the curve – Don’t copy what other pages are doing, you’ll always be following them. You need to be the first to find that cool thing to post, the first to share that breaking niche news. That’s what it takes to be ahead of the game. You can’t follow others. Not once did Jody given me content ideas. Any ideas she had were already being used. She trained me to think up ideas for myself within the Facebook framework.
5. Be yourself – Jody shared a story with me about swearing on her page for the first time. It’s something she does a little of in her day to day life but had never done on the page. The first time she did so on the wall, the interaction was HUGE. It wasn’t about swearing or whatever, but it was about her being who she is and people connecting with that. SO don’t try so hard. Be yourself.

So here’s the thing, you can tell me you are doing all this and STILL only 30% of your likes are every seeing your content. Well, true. It absolutely is the way it goes sometimes. I find that when I post when more of my readers are actually online {not when I can’t sleep in the middle of the night so it ends up at the very bottom of their news feed come morning} then it does better in terms of reach. Or people who have seen the post. That’s my final tip, take a look. Are you REALLY doing those 5 things? Are you there when your readers are or are you missing them?

There you go. My tips for an interactive Facebook community. It all comes down to one thing though in the end, it won’t happen over night, but it WILL happen. HA. I’m a bundle of clichés and slogans at the moment aren’t I!? But seriously  it will take a little bit to get your interaction up, because you’ve trained people not to interact with you and the algorithm knows it. Keep chipping away and sooner or later it will snowball.

Good luck Facebook’ers.

And heck, if you still hate it there that much, you can always delete your account. It’s the 2012 version of running away from home. HA. I saw that on an eCard on FACEBOOK. Of course. Because that’s where the action is people.