In which Fran muses about the futility of it all…
There are several ways that bloggers like myself get their writing seen.
The first is to appear on Google, which involves writing fairly dry but ultimately useful blog posts on topics that will actually be searched for. It’s hard work. Not really my style, to be honest.
The second is to sit back and wait for people to come directly to your website and check for new content. That one is very unlikely to happen, admittedly. People do not do this.
The third way is to share posts on social media.
For bloggers like me who just want to write what’s on their mind without thinking about which keywords to use and how it will rank in search engines, this has always been my preference and Facebook has always been my social media of choice. Over the past seven years I’ve amassed around 65,000 followers and gained literally millions of page views from them.
There are very rarely dickheads or arguments; it’s always been a fun way to pass the time, as well as a good way to share content.
However, over the past month I’ve noticed a massive difference on my Facebook page.
One day a few weeks back, things just stopped getting seen. I don’t mean a little bit or some things flopped; I mean BAM; overnight the algorithm changed and the content on my page was no longer being pushed out to my followers, at all. It was dead.
Even posts I made within my own Facebook groups weren’t being shown to anyone. Unusually, none of my friends had seen anything I’d posted; my stuff wasn’t even appearing on my own personal timeline and I follow myself religiously – someone has to I guess?!
I hadn’t broken any Facebook rules nor received any recent tellings off. It just changed overnight and it was extremely noticeable.
At the same time, my comments on other pages were getting ridiculous traction.
This is great for the pages I’m commenting on, and can be a fun way to waste a few hours, but it’s not really any use for sharing my own stuff. Page owners tend to get a bit miffed if you start promoting your stuff all over their space.
I did a little experiment and posted a new blog post on both my blog page and my personal page, which I commented on from my blog page. The difference in reach was massive.
I thought I’d found a get around – albeit an annoying and convoluted one. And then that stopped working too.
If I commented on an old post from my memories, then again it would come up in feeds; but not if it was new. For someone who relies on Facebook for the vast majority of my blog pageviews (the lifeblood of the blogging world) it was, and continues to be, extremely frustrating.
People who had been active on my page were telling me they hadn’t seen anything pop up recently.
There are ways to overcome this, but it relies on followers navigating to the page and turning on notifications; let’s face it, most people have hundreds of friends, groups and pages which they follow and they probably aren’t going to want to know every single time anyone posts anything. Plus, I can’t tell them about it, because they won’t see it.
For the majority of casual followers, they probably wouldn’t even realise I’m missing. Brutual huh.
There is of course the option of paying to be seen, which I suspect is what Facebook is after, but that’s quite frankly not going to happen. I’m meant to make money from this site, not spend it trying to get people to read the nonsensical ramblings I waste my time writing for free.
It seems for now, for me, Facebook is dead.
RIP.
I am fond of the place, so I won’t be giving up on it altogether, but I have found that I’ve naturally been spending less and less time there.
Rather than flexing my usual humour muscles and writing about current events which have made me smile or cry, I’ve been using my time trying to update old posts and create rather more dull but SEO-friendly content to drive more people here from Google.
I’d much rather be writing the fun stuff, but if no one is there to read it then why bother? Without social media, it has made creating content for that platform rather pointless. I’m not a quitter, but I know when something is a waste of time.
It was inevitable in the end I suppose.
The algorithms have been kind to me for years, but with everyone consuming more and more video content it is not surprising that pages who post other content – especially links that take you away from the site – are being pushed right to the bottom of the pile. Facebook itself is on the decline with its users dying off and not being replaced as the younguns all flock to TikTok instead.
And before you even think it, I am too old for TikTok. The blogging world may be all about adapting and surviving, but there are limits.
And what about The Other Place?
Well, luckily for me, this whole Facebook debacle happened at the same time as I had my first insane viral on Twitter, so rather than dwelling on it too much I was busy confusing Americans with blog posts about Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng*.
*Was that all a fever dream? Did Liz Truss ACTUALLY exist? It seems so unlikely.
Sadly, pinching random quotes from my Facebook comments section and going Twitter viral is not really a sustainable model for bringing in the page views.
Plus, this week, Twitter is on rocky ground this week thanks to its new ownership.
Imagine being so rich that you could literally become Batman, but instead you buy a website which is mainly used by people to argue about politics, complain to companies, and advertise OnlyFans accounts.
What a fucking world.
Where the chips will fall remains to be seen, but many people have already left and more are leaving every day in protest to the new management and the promises of fees. Plus, Twitter works pretty much in the same way as going into a car park and shouting at people and hoping some will hear you, so I’m not convinced that it’s a good place to try and build up an audience. Particularly as I have form for having my accounts taken away for using rude words…
So I guess I’ll just keep up with the writing-for-Google thing, and write some stuff, like this, for my own sanity. I hope that at some point it all blows over and gets back to normal… but if it doesn’t, I hope to see you around.
Anyway, if by some miracle you’re reading this, and you’re desperately sad at the prospect of not being able to see what I write (who wouldn’t be) then you have some options.
You can bookmark this site, and call in occasionally. You can go to Twitter and you might catch a tweet or two, or Instagram and you might see me sharing posts on stories. You can do the turn on notifications thing on Facebook, but I warn you it’s probably likely to get annoying. Or you can hope that Facebook sees the light and gives me a reprieve.
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