You can see what fb thinks is important to you by going to your page, logging in, and then running the script linked on this page. [link]
It uses a variety of factors (super seekrit trade info!) but includes time (more recently friended, etc.) and interactions. For example, it rates people for me as much higher in interest if I message them. Messages, incidentally, are also being stripped for marketing info, so don't think they're actually private even those you've limited them to one other person.
As an aside, if you have brands or musicians or authors or whoever that you actually do want to see posts from, it's important that you click, like, and share what you do see from them, and that will feed into the algorithm indicating your interest. Otherwise, some of what you see from the commercial pages will have diminished by up to 85% or so.
This does and doesn't work so well - when I share something on my author page, unless it gets forwarded and liked, only 10% of my audience sees it. So the sharing is a huge and growing part of it. Which is frustrating beyond measure. I don't want to have to ask people to share things just so other people who already indicated they wanted to see the same things can see them. GRUMBLE.
Wow, Liese. That was impressive! Thank you. I had no idea how/why a lot of that is done.
If I seem a little obsessive about it, it's because I am! It changes frequently; fb is run by people who are making some, shall we say, interesting choices about what should and shouldn't be done in social media.
But it affects me quite a lot, for the reasons that Sox mentions above. Hope in Transit has 1300 "fans" but the average post is seen by about 120 people. People that said, hey, keep me updated on Hope in Transit! If I pay for marketing, tens of thousands will see it.
So I end up doing a lot of click-baity shit. Like I just posted an old photograph I found (during decluttering, thanks, megan!) because it shows the SO sitting on a roundtable discussion panel with the musician I mentioned who's about to get in the GMA hall of fame. It's only tangentially related to the ministry. But it has a total reach of 500 in only two hours. And off-prime hours at that.
And now I am grateful I don't work in a Social Media Marketing. That sounds exhausting.
It really, really does. And it also makes me realize I have no idea what I'm doing with my author page (which I've neglected for a year anyway, but still).
I need to scan some more pictures. I keep missing Throwback Thursday.
So no one else was redirected from Liese's link to somewhere unsavory? Uh oh.
I was directed to a perfectly respectable site with code that did what it said it would.
I am my favorite Facebook person, btw. No surprises there.
