Depression on Facebook

Okay, so the facebook page is going very well.  I'm still playing around with what I'd call my "format."  I'm trying to maintain a consistent look and posting style.  In radio, we would call this "imaging."  I'm not trying to make it impersonal or commercial, but even with causes and community groups, some sort of branding is involved and you need to help people identify you as a source, whether the thing you offer is a product, a service, or a cause.

And I'm having fun playing around with that anyway.  What a lot of groups on facebook are struggling to do is to make their pages more interactive.  FB has really squelched reach, in an effort to compel page owners to "pay to boost."  I don't mind this if it's a method applied only to commercial pages.  It should never be forced on community pages, particularly those mental health pages that are owned and operated by patients of mental health services.  Many of us are on fixed income or no income at all, and we do not generate revenue through our pages.

Due to their (facebook's) "Pay to Boost" efforts, the average reach of community and personal pages has now plummeted to about 7%.  Many pages, therefore have resorted to posting requests for followers to like and comment, so that the page's ranking goes up.  Following the lead of others, I composed my own meme, and it's a pretty comparable representation:

I've made a few and I varied the wording on each so that it doesn't get boring.  I also post them no more than once per day, but it's still tedious for both me and the people reading my page.  Basically, we're begging our followers to like and comment on nothing at all.  Believe me, we hate posting these requests.

The logic behind this is that reach is increased when followers interact with your posts.  If they like, comment, and/or share, your page's ranking goes up and more people see your posts to begin with.  If there's negative interaction such as "Hide Post," "Hide All Posts," or "Report as Spam," the page's ranking drops and their reach dwindles.

So that's why we're trying to find ways to make our pages more interactive and increase positive responses to our posts.  If you have a page you like, make sure you don't hold back on your clicks and comments.  Even commenting with one or two words helps that page's owner, and you'll see more of their posts.

When I first started my page back in May, I was posting two memes per day.   I realize people like more than one page, and I didn't want to obnoxiously be blasting people's feeds with a ton of posts and second-hand content shared from other pages.  Now I'm up to 8 posts per day, evenly spaced by 1 1/2 - 2 hours, and I keep shared content to a minimum.  Hope it's not becoming an annoyance.

So in an effort to make my page more interactive, I've started asking a question each day, and I've also changed my page settings to allow others to post to my wall.  As to that second thing, I'm still not sure about that.  I've seen other pages get hit with spam posts and with people posting links to their own pages.  I don't want that happening.  I share another facebook page once per day, and I only do it if I've looked the page over and think it's really good.  I also don't do it in order to get a share in return.  It's nice when it happens, but I never ask for it or expect it.

So no, I really don't want people to link their pages without asking me first.  I'll see how it goes there.  If I think it's getting out of hand, I'll disable that setting again.  Considerate people PM me first, asking me to share their page, but unfortunately, that's not everyone.  It's not even most.

So all I can do right now is keep putzing around with things until I get a format that works well.  And if something's not working, or people find something obnoxious or not particularly helpful, all I can do is hope they let me know before they unlike my page.