Someone posted in a forum this week about how they get paranoid now that the feed on their Facebook page gets less love than it did in the beginning. I’m the same and here are my theories:
When you first started out, your fanbase was just your friends and family. So supporting, even when I look back and think “what was I thinking?!” of my photos in the beginning. But then you started taking on clients and the new photo postings were daily. Hourly, even. And everyone got used to seeing great stuff from you. It became white noise in their news feed. Or maybe a lovely white snowfall :*)
You’ve gotten so good that you’ve become like the popular girl in school. Everyone assumes that you’ve already got a date to the prom so they don’t even bother. They don’t see what difference it makes whether they liked your photo or not because you’re ‘famous’ so they just sit back and enjoy silently.
Let’s face it…Facebook is old. They’ve already made a movie about it for crying out loud: it’s a solid establishment in social structure of the universe. A dinosaur, even. Old as it may be, we’re still addicted. So like drones, we ‘check’ our FB every 10 minutes but the thrill of interaction has left as we are inundated with vast amounts of information, text, photos, notifications. It’s no longer a novelty. It’s no longer exciting to comment and who has the time, anyway? Your FB feed changes every millisecond and it’s pretty hard to keep up. I often feel frantic in my mind as I scroll through what’s happened in the last hour that one gets the sense that there’s no time. It’s exhausting!
They just can’t. Often when accessing FB from my iPhone, I’ll leave a comment and then it pops up and says something about the function being unavailable. And most of the time, I’m accessing on the go. And when it’s blog posts I can’t reply to, it’s because, again, I follow all my blogs on the go within an RSS app on my iPhone and it doesn’t allow me to comment. So there are many blogs I’m following out there, mainly moms writing about Rett Syndrome, who don’t have a clue that I hang on every last word to get me through my rough days.
Another reason might be that you don’t understand how Facebook works. Do you know about affinity? The weight that Facebook gives to your different posts? Read this post from The Modern Tog – it will help tremendously!
So what are some good ways to get interactions on your photos?
- Post less. Out of an entire session, I’m starting to narrow it down to one single ‘money shot’. The one that moves me. And I post that on my wall, not in an album. Less = more when you’re talkin’ imagery and visual stimulation. Also, if you have a page yourself, you’ll know that FB doesn’t provide notifications to page owners. So if you want to actually see the comments, post them as a one-off on your own wall.
- Join groups on Flickr like ‘Post one, comment three’ where the premise of the group is to get action on your stuff.
- Join a forum like Rock the Shot where everyone is super supportive and is in the same boat. It really helps me!
So who else is in the same boat and do you identify with any of my theories or have one of your own? Comment below!
