To what Facebook is doing with pages and views these days. So how has it affected your page and posts? Has paying to promote posts been effective at reaching your audience? 

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It's rubbish!!! A lot less interaction and my page feels lost in the FB maze....
 

Yup, what's going on?!  I used to be able to see the post of the business pages I 'liked' and now I don't see their newest posts. Why is that? what did FB do?

If you interact with your fans a lot and post interesting information which people turn around and share, comment on, 'get excited' about, etc., it helps. People that just throw their work up there every so often but don't engage their fans will not be successful with their page in most cases. I try to post at least once a day when I don't have a new project to show off. Whether it's a funny share of something else, something funny I took a picture of, or something that 'riles the masses'. That is how you get an increased presence.

There are a couple of things you/your followers can do. If you follow a page but are not getting the updates they write on their wall/timeline, you have to go to their page, and on the right hand side there is a drop down menu. You have to click on Add to Interest Lists, to carry on getting their stuff in your news feed. Consequently, for a business page, your fans/followers have to do this for your page for them to see your news. It's a pain.

 

The other thing is you need to interact more with the page you are following. When a news story appears in your news feed, click through to the page. Or click on posts they have made that you find interesting. Or like their stuff, or comment on it. The more you interact with other pages, the more news you will get, even if you have not gone through the process of Adding to Interest Lists.

 

In any case, it's a nightmare. Also, I am now seeing stuff in my news feed of companies I follow when they "like" other companies photos, comments, posts. So I see a whole load of things I might not be interested in at all! Ho hum...

 

I'm not sure paying to promote your posts works so well. You could try one and see. You can get the stats from FB to see which of your posts are popular/not.

Forgot to say that I have not noticed a dramatic decrease in the number of people who see my posts since this started. But I have no idea why.
 

I don't know that the following is true, but it was posted on 4 of the business pages of cake makers that I follow, including Edna De La Torre.

Adding something to your interest list only works if you're liking it from a personal page. If you're posting as your business account that option won't show up. Just an FYI

I have to admit to thinking it is sort of a GOOD thing.  When FB pages first started, I liked my immediate cake buddies and then I liked cakers that they liked, and then I found a few other interesting pages, healthy meal plan recipes, then cake suppliers, international cake artists, local radio stations, emergency services department (for weather, storm & fire alerts) heck I even liked the local police (because we were getting alerts regarding local crime etc)   Before long I found I had liked over 600 different pages.   I just don't have enough hours in a day to constantly be reading updates...... and sometimes those updates are BORING RUBBISH that people are just posting .... just to get their page in your face!!   I have set up a 'list' called Cake Pals - and if I get some free time I can click on that and all the recent posts come up... but still it takes TIME !!

 

I say to all of you who are obsessing about getting your page seen - spend the time making GORGEOUS cakes instead - people will SEEK you out !

I don't want to hear that you are on your 3rd coffee, that you have developed cankles from standing all day AND I sure as heck do not want to read a gazillion posts about you fretting because people aren't 'seeing' you - I love the odd bit of humour (you know who you are) but really don't want to be flooded with stupid quotes/games or hear all about your cat's fleas, or your lazy arse husband.

 

I LOVE to see new work, interesting cakes and if you have discovered a new product/tool/technique.....   if you are on the other side of the world and in the middle of an emergency like Sandy... I want to hear that you are OK -   I do care.... I really DO  -  BUT I have a family of my own, a house to tend, a business to run and as yet have not discovered how to add another 12 hours into every day.  

So please...... lets STOP worrying about how many people see what you post

AI'm not surprised. As FB continues to monetize its platform it will be more and more difficult for businesses to get meaningful reach with a FB site alone without paying to play (ads, sponsored posts, etc.)

I don't know how meaningful a reach we have now, since people tend to try to get as many likes as they can regardless of who's liking them. I do have a lot of brides on my page, but the majority of people on there are other decorators. They're not going to be my customers for the most part, so I don't know if "meaningful" in terms of increasing business is what it is. It's good to see what other people are doing, but it's not increasing my business.

 

I'm with Pam as far as how limiting the feed is a good thing. Think of what you'd have to wade through every time you went on there if every single thing you'd ever clicked "like" on was shown on your page. If people actually did limit their likes to family or friends that's one thing, but there's no way I'd want to see the clutter that would ensue if everything I've clicked to like was shown. That's what happens on twitter and you evnetually go back and delete half of them because there's just too much.

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They should do what businesses did before FB, create a professionally designed web site and drive profitable users to that site via SEO and advertising. If a business owner can't afford to pay for advertising, they need to raise their prices to cover that cost.