Late last year, I wrote about how I use Facebook less and less. I’ve used the last few months to figure out what works best for me and I’ve come to the conclusion that the easiest thing for me to do is divide my Facebook activity into two parts. My personal Facebook page will be for personal updates. These updates are fairly infrequent and rarely include anything about writing, reading, automation, Evernote, paperless, etc.
On the other hand, my Facebook Page is the place where the bulk of my Facebook activity happens today. This is where I post about writing, blogging, reading, automation, going paperless, and just about anything else that most people who follow my stuff seem to be interested in.
With this divide in mind, beginning in April, I’m going to begin removing people from my personal Facebook account who don’t meet one of the following categories:
- We are family (or extended family)
- We are friends outside of Facebook.
- We work together, either in the day job or in the science fiction world.
- We have met in real life.
If you don’t fall into one of these 4 categories and want to continue to follow my updates on Facebook about the kinds of things I post about here on the blog, I recommend going to my Facebook Writer Page. The updates will continue there, but I will be removing people from my personal Facebook account who don’t meet one of the four criteria listed above.
On the flip side, if you are family, a friend, a coworker, or we have met in real life, and you want to see updates about my writing, blogging, automation, Evernote, etc., then you will also want to follow my Facebook Writer Page, since my personal Facebook page will be focused on personal updates (kids, family, etc.)
The truth is that since December, I have been far more active on my Facebook Page than my personal Facebook page. It’s where the action is. For instance, notices of new blog posts here go to my Facebook Page, but not to my personal Facebook account.
These changes will start in April and I hope that by the end of April, the transition will be complete.
Bottom line, if you are not sure, and want to continue following my updates on Facebook, follow my Facebook Writer Page. That’s where the bulk of the updates will be happening.
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Jamie – This is a well thought out plan… and I’m looking forward to both sides of it. I’ve been trying to figure out similar strategies, and there’s one thing that bothers me… the fact that Facebook is throttling the visibility of page posts down to 10% (last year) and 3% now – unless the page owner pays – so that those who follow your page likely won’t see your posts very often, if at all. And I’m hearing that when you do boost a post, the boost goes out to a general audience, not necessarily those who already like the page.
That, plus the concern that the pay-for-presence model for pages may work with a large corporate budget, but seems to be poised to drown smaller folks, concerns me. If there are limited views allotted over all, they’ll become increasingly more expensive the more people opt in.
I too am interested in ways to reach all sides of my life with posts that are appropriate to their interests – but I’m worried about pages not being the right place for me. I’ll be very interested to see your results and the insights you draw from them. You always see things that I don’t.
Fran, mostly, I am trying to better manage information flow, and automate what can be automated, while at the same time, making sure I’m not boring one audience with stuff they are not particularly interested in.
I am much more committed to Twitter than Facebook, and I don’t keep up with changes in the latter. That said, back in December, I experimented with their promotion model. I set aside $55 to promote two of my Facebook Page posts just to see what the difference was. The typical reach on one of my Facebook page post back in December was between 30-75. On the boosted posts, the reach was between 3,000 – 5,800. This resulted in engagement (clicks) between 300-500. I like being as transparent as possible in these things, so here is the actual data from these two campaigns.
I think you could build a mathematical model that would tell you, given your followers, etc., what the optimal amount to spend to increase your reach, if you choose to go that route. I haven’t done a promotional post since these two because I don’t really have a strategy for optimizing this without annoying people. But I think the tests were valuable because I think the data can be useful in the long run.
however if you put a page in your “interests list” you will see it. I will just add Jamie’s writers page to my Evernote “interest list” which will ensure his posts there will continue to show up for me.
I read somewhere (?) lately that Facebook’s rules are changing, and that if you aren’t active on someone’s business page every month, you’ll automatically unlike it – bad news for someone like me, who thinks of my writer FB page as mainly a way to subscribe. Like you, Jamie, I’m more committed to Twitter than FB.
I used to have for my personal FB what I called the “dinner rule” – if you came to town and I wouldn’t want to make time to invite you to dinner, you shouldn’t be my Facebook friend. I’ve become a little more open, lately, but I rarely update.