Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Facebook Limits Post Coverage: Here's the Fix

One of my Facebook buds, Sonya Chappelear, passed around the following note this a.m., telling all of us--or at least some of us--that Facebook is not sending our latest posts to all our friends and what we can do about it. The fix is simple, but the problem is large. Our posts are going only to the people we have had contact with recently and in my case, that would be a small percentage of the nearly 1,700 FB "friends" on the list.

Here's the problem and the fix from Sonya:

Facebook likes to make changes and not really tell everyone. This is an easy way to get the word out - and currently the only way to assure that everyone can see it.
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Have you noticed that you are only seeing updates in your news feed from the same people lately? Have you also noticed that when you post things like status messages, photos and links, the same circle of people are commenting and everyone else seems to be ignoring you?

Don't worry, everyone still loves you and nobody has intentionally blocked you. The problem is that a large chunk of your friend/fan list can't see anything you post and here's why:

The "New Facebook" has a newsfeed setting that by default is automatically set to show only posts from people who you've recently interacted with or interacted the most with (which would be limited to the couple of weeks just before people started switching to the new profile). So in other words, for both business and personal pages, unless your friends/fans commented on one of your posts within those few weeks or vice-versa - you are now invisible to them and they are invisible to you!!

HERE'S THE FIX: On the homepage click the "Most Recent" title on the right of the News feed, then click on the drop down arrow beside it and select "Edit Options", click on "Show Posts From" and change the setting to "All Of Your Friends and Pages" (you can also access the "Edit Options" link at the very bottom of the Facebook homepage on the right) Note: Business pages do not have a news feed. Page owners should adjust the settings on their personal accounts.

The good news is: now you can now view all of your friends and fans again. The bad news is: you are still invisible to a large portion of your list. You must get the word out to all of your friends and fans by inviting them to this event or creating one of your own so they can read the post and adjust their settings. To invite your friends: Click on "Attending" at the top and then you will see an option to invite your friends at the top left. It’s public so everyone who logs onto facebook can view it and even the friends who can’t see your posts will see the event invitation. You can also tweet about it, create a blog post or send out an email to your subscribers in hopes of reaching them all.

1 comment:

  1. Great post that will help us connect more fluidly. Thanks Dan!
    Cathy Dick

    ReplyDelete