From City Streets to Country Roads: It's Like Starting Over

Hello everyone!

I hope y'all had a wonderful, productive, relaxing weekend.

I know I did. Poor CountryBoy had to work on Saturday but he enjoyed his one day off especially since he didn't have to do any laundry, household chores or grocery shopping! Needless to say, he's a happy camper now that I'm not working. (And, so am I, smile!)

Last week I wrote and published a couple of blog posts and have been posting status updates a lot more on my Facebook page. I have to tell ya, it's like starting over. Apparently, the majority of people who 'Liked' or follow me, either in blogland or on Facebook, have given up on me or haven't realized that I'm posting again because the stats of both are showing low numbers of viewers.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining (OK, so maybe I am. a little bit, wink!), it's just a little frustrating this feeling of starting over.

And, Facebook? Don't get me started on that. When the Facebook powers-that-be decided to change who gets to see what posts they limited the numbers. Greatly limited the numbers I might add. I can 'boost my post' (in other words, get more people to see the post) if I pay a monthly fee.

Well, I've got news for them... I'm not paying money just so people can keep up with a page that they Liked. They should be able to see ALL updates from ALL the pages they Liked. After all, they Liked the page(s) for a reason and now Facebook is deciding what they can and cannot see? Ugh!

After doing a bit of online research there are a couple of things that the Facebook viewer can do to increase the odds of seeing updates from friends and Liked pages. The following information from lifehacker was the easiest to understand and to implement..

Facebook doesn't automatically show you all the content shared by your liked pages or even friends, and recently Facebook page owners have been experiencing extreme declines in audience reach. If there are pages or friends you always want to see updates for, here are the settings you should change.

There are a few methods you could try (or combine). The first is to add friends or pages to your "interests" lists. Click on the "Interests" link in the left menu from your home page, then "More" and add the people or pages you most want to see updates from. This tells Facebook that you'd like to see this content, but it's not 100% foolproof.

For the most important updates (e.g., your significant other), set up notifications for them. On your Facebook friends' profile, click on the dropdown "Friends" button and click on "Get notifications." You could also do this with Facebook pages—although depending on how much the page updates, you might end up getting more alerts than you care to dig through. On the Facebook page in question, hover over the "Liked" button so you can click the "Get notifications" option. As Facebook explains on its help page, this setting notifies you (via red alert bubbles in the top right corner of any Facebook page) every time the person or page posts something shared with you.

As commenter joesub notes below, you can instead add the pages and friends you like to their own lists and then favorite the lists. This might be the best method since it shows everything.

So there ya have it. I will be doing this, as well, so that I can see all updates from my friends and Liked pages.

And, in due time I hope my viewers will realize I am back...

Oh, and if you are on Facebook and haven't done so already but would like to follow along there you can simply hit the blue Like button with the check in it at the top of the column to the left. I'd love to see ya there!

I'm jumping off my soapbox now and wanna leave you with a purdy image and a sample of my next post...