Helping the Pages You Love

Facebook pages are an interesting creature. They don't work the way that one might thing they would. The newest uproar is that Facebook is "charging" pages when a page manager wants their posts to reach more people. I have been reading about this for a while now, and I wanted to set a few things straight...

It's true that Facebook has made paying to promote your posts (and make them show up more prominently in news feeds) an option for page owners. However, there MORE ways that you as a FAN of a Facebook page have control over how a page shows up than you probably know. That is what I'm going to talk to you about right now.

When you click the LIKE button on a Facebook page on Facebook, you have officially declared yourself a fan. Welcome! We're glad you're here!! If you stop right there, you may or may not ever see that page in your news feed again. Facebook does a lot of things like keyword reading, etc. to see what you are interested in. This is why you start noticing that the ads to the side always seem to match up with the things you're talking about on the site.

Facebook shares page content in a similar way. It keeps track of how often you visit a page, how often you click the LIKE button when a page's updates are shared in your feed, how often you comment, and how often you share content from that page. Based on that information, it shows you more or less of a page in your news feed.

Facebook has also implemented this formula in the opposite for pages. The more a page's fans (that's YOU) visit a page, like it's status, or share it's content, the more "important" that page will appear to the programs controlling how much and what content makes it to it's fan's news feeds. A page OWNER can over ride the program's calculations by paying to "promote" a post. Otherwise, content that makes it to a news feed is based on FAN interaction. Facebook also tracks how well a page's specific post reach is doing. As more fans like, comment on and share a post, Facebook registers the information, and makes that specific post start to show as something other fans might be interested in by sharing it in news feeds.

This leads me to the SOLUTION. There are a couple ways to make sure you're not missing out on content from your favorite pages, and that Facebook knows that the pages YOU like are something worth sharing.

1. VISIT, LIKE, COMMENT and SHARE!! It's pretty simple! If you want a page to show up in your feed, take a moment to click the LIKE button! Leave a COMMENT! SHARE when you have the choice!! This helps the pages you want to see to show up for you, and lets Facebook know that the pages you like should be shared with more fans.

2. Start Facebook's page version of LISTS!! If you look at the left sidebar toward the bottom of all those links, you'll see INTERESTS. Start an interest list, and create a list for pages you want to make sure not to miss. These interest lists can be public or visible only to you. Once you've made one, all you have to do to see new content from your favorite pages is click on the list!!

HERE'S HOW:
Find the INTEREST area by clicking on the facebook at the top left, and scrolling down until you see the INTERESTS section. Click ADD INTERESTS

 In the new screen, click the +CREATE LIST button.

 Then choose the PAGES feature (for the purpose of this post about pages) and start selecting the pages you want to add to this list. Any pages with the blue check square are pages you have clicked to select. Clicking any already selected page with remove the blue checked square, and deselect that page from your list. When you're finished, click NEXT.

 Now choose your new list's name, and it's visibility. Then click DONE.

 Now, when you click on your new interest list, the pages you've added to it will be shown, and you can start liking, commenting and sharing!!