The new Facebook stinks – but here’s how to make it a little better…

So I am still grumbling over all the new Facebook changes.  I can get used to the new newsfeed and profile changes.  But they are making changes to fan pages that undermine the choice you made to follow me in the first place AND hurt me as a page/blog owner.  The reason my blog exists is because I have people that come to my blog.   Roughly 40% of the people that visit my blog every day do so because they follow me on Facebook, they received an update in their news feed that interested them and clicked on it and it brought them to my page.  40%….nearly half.

I spend a lot of time on the computer every day working on this blog to bring you information that you want.  But one thing that makes my life just a little easier is a program called RSS Graffiti which takes a post that I have put on the blog and automatically puts it on Facebook so that I do not have to take another 2-3 minute per post I make a day (which is somewhere around 20 posts per day).  Then you see that post and decide to visit my blog.

Facebook, however, has decided that it does not like page owners to use programs like this so it is choosing to NOT show YOU (the person that “liked” my page because you wanted too) the posts that YOU want to see. 

This has caused me to lose nearly 40% of my traffic.  Posts that have been automatically posted are being show on less than 200 Facebook walls when posts that I make manually get shown on 3,000+ walls.  So I am going to do my part to help you get the information that you want by manually adding as many of the links as I can (remember 3 minutes per post at 20 posts a day equals a WHOLE HOUR of extra work for me.)

What you can do, to make sure you see any posts that I do not get to add manually, is either make a “list” within your Facebook and add me to it.  When you make a list, you can click on it at any time and see only the posts from the people and/or pages you added to the list.  So you can make a list of all your favorite blog pages, your family members, your friends from high school, however you want to manage your lists.  Just make sure Saving Toward A Better Life is on one of the lists you will check frequently!

Another thing you can do is anytime you see one of my posts in your newsfeed is to click the upper left corner to mark it as a “Top Story”.  This tells Facebook that YES you DO want to see updates from my page (because “liking” me obviously wasn’t proof enough).  And it also adds a little credibility to my page making it more likely that Facebook will show it on others’ walls as well (that also have decided to “like” my page.)

 

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