Tech for Luddites

Over the years, Facebook has made a number of changes to the algorithm they use to determine which posts will show up in your default news feed. Sadly, none of those changes have ever been, “Let me decide for myself.”

A couple of years ago, they made a particularly major change from the point of view of Facebook Pages. Previously, if you Liked a Page, you would probably see their posts fairly frequently in your news feed unless you chose not to see them. Then Facebook decided that they were going to significantly limit how many people would see your Page’s posts… unless the Page owner paid for the privilege. This change got a lot of news coverage at the time, with a lot of companies really upset because they had often spent a lot of money to get their followers in the first place and they saw their posts’ organic (aka non-paid) reach drop enormously.

Since then, Facebook has made more tweaks to the algorithm and in August 2016, Marketing Land reported on a study by SocialFlow that said in the first half of the year, Facebook Pages’ organic reach had declined by 52% in the first six months of the year.

Now, while Page owners were understandably frustrated by this turn of events, a lot of regular Facebook users were probably too busy playing the world’s biggest violin to notice. 🙂 There have certainly been plenty of Pages that overshared when there was no cost involved.

However, some users actually are interested in what the companies they’re following are posting—otherwise they could just UnLike them or not Like them in the first place. If you’re one of these people who wish you could see more of your favourite Pages’ posts—like the ones shared by, say, I don’t know… Tech for Luddites—there are a few ways you can improve your chances of doing so.

• Engage with their posts. Now at first you may have to go to the Page’s Timeline if they’re not showing up in your news feed. But the more often you Like, Share, or Comment on a Page’s posts, the more likely they are to show up in your news feed in the future. They’re also more likely to start showing up on other people’s news feeds. For example, T4L has about 1,100 Facebook followers. If I post something and no one engages with it, it may show up in the news feeds of 30-50 followers. But if even just a few of those people Like, Share, or Comment on a post, it might be seen by 3 or 4 times as many people. Which will then usually increase the number of Likes, Shares, and Comments. It’s basically one giant positive feedback loop . 🙂
• Add them to your See First list. This is a setting you can choose when you click the Like button on the Page’s Timeline and then click the Edit button (looks like a pencil). This tells Facebook you want to make these posts a priority. (You can also do this for your friends’ posts from a button on their Timeline or from the News Feed Preferences popup you can access by clicking the down arrow at the top right of Facebook, beside the question mark.)

• Get notifications. The same menu from the Liked button offers an option to receive notifications and even lets you choose which type of posts you want to be notified about. And what’s really nice is that it tells you how often this Page posts, so you can decide if it’s going to be too much.

Change your Tech for Luddites news feed and notification preferences here. >>

You may also be interested in:

The Facebook News Feed: How to (Sort of) Control What You See

Two Facebook Tips to Save You Some Typing