A Social (Media) Experiment

by Sherri Stokey

Of all the struggles we face as independent artisans and small business owners (if you can even call us that - teeny tiny business owners?), one of the most daunting is figuring out how to be seen.  You can make the most amazing stuff ever, but unless you figure out a way to connect with the people who want to buy it, you're probably not going to stay in business long.

Some folks have good luck with doing craft shows and in-person events, but many rely on online sales, especially those of us who live in rural areas.  I have to tell you, it's really, really hard on a person's ego to be outsold by corncobs in Nebraska Cornhusker hats (and that's a true story) in the next booth over.  That and the made-in-China jewelry being sold at a fraction of the price a couple more booths down.

I made the decision years ago to go with online sales and it's really an amazing thing that we have the capability of doing that now.  Not to date myself or anything, but I grew up without the internet and without having all these choices available at our fingertips.  We spent a lot of time going from store to store or pouring over the pages of catalogs looking for just the right thing.  Now I can find almost anything I want, from anywhere in the world, and have it sent right to my front door and I can do it in my jammies.  It works the other way around, too: I can put the micro macrame jewelry I make by hand online and people all around the world can purchase it.  IF... (oh, the dreaded "if") they can find me.

When I really started trying to make my hobby work as a business (or at least a self-sustaining hobby), Facebook was just getting big and was the place to be as far as social media.  I set up a page for my business and started gathering a small following.  Life was good.  People who "liked" my page saw the pieces I posted.  Then somewhere along the line, Facebook started deciding which posts people would see and which ones they would not.  They started charging to have your posts seen and I started to feel like the invisible man.  Let me give you some statistics from my own experience (disclaimer:  I cannot tell you if these are typical numbers or not, they are simply from my personal experience).

My page Knot Just Macrame has 42K followers.  That's over 42,000 nice people who have taken the time to say they like what I make and they want to see more of it.  Those aren't bought and paid for "likes", either (I think we've established I'm too cheap for that).  I posted a photo a couple of days ago and it was shown to 414 people.  Less than 1% of the followers of my page.  Seriously, Facebook?

And just when I thought I'd reached the bottom of the "reach" barrel (that's what Facebook calls how many people your post reaches), Facebook decided to show me just how low I could really go:

Yes, that's actually a negative number!  It's not like the photo I posted was offensive or anything:

How do you even show it to a negative number of people, anyway?  UN-show it to them?  On this particular day I was almost desperate enough to give in to the Facebook strong-arming and pay to "boost" my post.  Right up until I actually clicked on the button and looked at the figures.  For a mere $20, they would show this post (and only this post) to an estimated 700-1900 of my followers.  Yes, to the people who had already said they like my stuff and want to see it.  That number is still less than 5% of the fans I already worked to get, and they'll do me the honor of showing my post to those people for $20.  *sigh*

Now I'm sure there are those of you out there who are saying, shut up and pay up, but I honestly feel like I'm being extorted.  Extort:  obtain something by force, threats, or other unfair means.  It's not that I'm against paying for advertising, but not like this.  It just goes against every fiber of my being.  You might also think it's just a matter of what I'm posting because we all know a post with a link to the item on Etsy won't be shown to anyone, etc.  I shared a video of a puppy playing with a doorstop and that got over 6.6K views, though... 

In the midst of all this unrest, I came across a post on Facebook saying that posts about Facebook will be shown to many more people.  So being the rebel that I am, I decided to conduct a little experiment.  I posted this on my page:

It mentions Facebook no less than 15 times, and guess what?  In slightly over 24 hours, it's been shown to almost 10,000 people!  That's more than my previous eight posts combined.

Well ain't that a kick in the teeth?  What's interesting is that a lot of the folks who saw this post took the time to reply to it, and what I heard from a lot of them was some variation of "I like your posts but I haven't been seeing them on Facebook in a while."  

So what have I learned from this experiment (besides the fact that Facebook is apparently very narcissistic)?  For starters, I've learned that not everyone is as easily amused as I am.  In fact, 20 people decided to unlike my page when I posted this.  Another 15 people decided to hide all my posts (can someone explain why you'd do this rather than just unlike the page?).  Another two folks decided to report the post as spam!  Aside from that, I've learned that I'm going to have to find another way to connect with people.

I'm too old, too crabby and quite frankly, too disinterested to learn the social media game over again and try to keep up with the ever changing rules.  I'd rather spend my time creating beautiful pieces than learning the proper uses of a hashtag.  And I won't give in to the pressure to pay for posts.  I just need to find a new place to hang out with my friends.  Anyone have any suggestions?

Meanwhile, if you enjoy seeing posts from your favorite Facebook pages, here are some suggestions for you:  try "liking" and commenting regularly on posts from those pages and you should (theoretically) be shown more of their posts.  If that's not working for you, go to the page and hover over the "liked" button at the top, then choose "see first" in your newsfeed and/or turn on notifications.  It's a pain to have to do it for every page you want to see, but the other option is to have Facebook choose what you will see and what you will not.  One last option is to create an Interest List (instructions can be found here) and add the pages you want to see to it.  This option requires that you click on that list to see them, but at least you can find them that way, and see all the posts.

If you have any better suggestions, I'd love to hear them!  Oh, and in case you missed them, these are some of my posts in the last week:

And the puppy playing with the doorstop?  It's here.  You're welcome.