Social Media can be one of the best things for a business, blog, organization, etc, but it also requires a lot of work. Many find themselves discouraged and asking "Why aren't people interacting with my social media?". Well let me tell you, it's probably not
you. One thing I have noticed on my own social media is that the readers are plenty, they just don't want to interact. Here are a few reasons why your page may have far more readers than you think, and why they're probably just not interacting.
If I am misinformed about something posted here please let me know. I am not a social media professional. These posts are through my own experiences and if there are things in here that I have mentioned to be "bad" features that can be changed or altered in my settings or by other means, please let me know!
Facebook:
Facebook is probably one of the biggest social media headaches to anyone that's had to run a Facebook page (not a personal page). Facebook has made it to where practically NO ONE sees anything that we post! One of my pages has 800 "Likes" and do you know my reach is usually around 48? How upsetting is that? Why bother, right?
In attempt to make money off of us, Facebook wants you to pay money to "boost" your posts for more readers to see. My opinion? That would be great to boost it to people that aren't already following your page! There's no reason to have to pay for people that are already following your page to see your posts! There is an option for the reader to view or not view your posts, so why is Facebook deciding? Because of this, I have recently stopped relying so much on Facebook for promoting my posts.
Another reason you may not be getting interaction is because every time someone likes or comments on something you post, their friends are notified. This discourages your readers from doing anything, because they don't want all their friends to know! If that doesn't make sense to you, let me give you an example:
From my personal Facebook, I follow a page that posts questions that fans send in needing advice. A fan once asked how long it took postpartum mothers to get their menstrual cycle back. I wanted to offer my personal experiences, but did not because I did not want my co-workers, friends, family and even some acquaintances to be notified that i just wrote about my period! It's not that I'm embarrassed by it, I'm an open book, but I don't want my boss to know if I'm "on the rag" and I don't really care if a bunch of women on a woman's support page do.
Twitter: I notice this with most Social Media, but Twitter is the worst. Simply put: they're probably just not seeing your posts! Twitter (in my opinion) is all about followers. There are people on there with 50K followers! Do you have any idea how fast their news feed must be moving? How do they read anything!? Because of this, I'm discouraged from it even as a blogger, but I do have my posts set to auto post to Twitter, just in case my followers on Twitter are actually interested.
Another thing about Twitter that may turn off readers is that every time a reader posts a comment on your post, their message shows up in the news feed of everyone that follows that person, and to see the "question", they have to expand the post. That goes back to the whole Facebook issue of everyone knowing what you're posting on every one's page. People don't like it.
Instagram: I personally like Instagram as a blogger and a personal user. As a personal user, I love taking a mediocre picture and making it look nice for my family to see. As a blogger, I see room for improvement. There are so many pictures that other bloggers share that I would love to "repost" for those that follow me to see, but there is not a repost option. That being said, I don't know that instagram is made for those types of posts. It is probably for personal pictures and doesn't provide a sharing option for privacy reasons. That I can understand. Maybe an option to allow sharing of particular posts?
It also makes it hard to share blog posts on there for readers to see. Unless you have a fancy piece of art work for every post you write, there's really no way to tell your Instagram fans about the post, and even if you do post the picture, it can be difficult if not impossible to post a link for them to click on to get to the post.
Instagram for the most part can only be used on your cell phone. That makes a 20 second process of copy and paste on a computer take 10 minutes on a cell phone.
Have you ever seen a giveaway on Instagram? Its 1 picture that has been reposted so many times you cant even tell what the original colors were in the picture. I saw one yesterday for a pretty orange necklace. I did some searching to find the original poster. Once I found the person that originally posted it, I learned that it was actually pink, but had been reposted so many times (people were adding overlays before they posted it - not sure why) that the color was not at all what it was supposed to be. I can only assume people were sharing these by taking a screen shot of the pic, saving it to their phone and uploading it under their own account. How aggravating can that get? If you're a giveaway guru, you probably have giveaway pics all over your phone that you don't need.
I would also love it if Instagram gave the option of adding multiple accounts. I have a couple (DownSideUpMommy, FromPregnantToMarathon, xBJSCC, and my personal)...OK more than a couple. On the Twitter phone app, you can add more than one account, so I would love it on Instagram. (On Twitter, at the bottom right where it says "Me", swipe to the left). The logging in and out all the time kills me.
Pinterest:
I love Pinterest. I have been with Pinterest since before it blew up into something huge. One thing I don't like, however, is trying to get to the website of something I pinned, and it's either a broken link, or it links to the blog's main page and not the actual post. I will immediately close whatever site it linked to, leave a "broken link" comment on the pin, and delete it from my board. No, I do not search their blog looking for it. Its frustrating and usually a waste of time. I like to compliment folks on their hard work, but if they're not linking things correctly, they're losing interaction from readers that may want to talk about that post or ask a question. I also cannot stand how Pinterest is becoming a followers thing. It's nice to have 1 million followers, but why are you following 1 million people? I don't think i even know 1 thousand in real life, let alone want to follow them on Pinterest. Did you know there's a "browse" option? Pinterest is something i really enjoy and would hate to see it go down the tubes because of people that are social media greedy. Ya'll can stay over on Twitter for that.
Bloglovin':
If you want me to be 100% honest, I don't use it. I follow back those who follow me, to be polite, but other than that, I don't get on it. Its another Social Media outlet that I have set up my blog posts to auto post in case there are those on there that want to read my posts. Although I do want to mention that I have never followed anyone on that website unless they followed me first (I returned the favor to be polite). I just took a peak and saw that I am following 100 folks, and only have 39 followers. Funny.
Last one I use is Google+. To be honest, when i made my account for it I rolled my eyes in annoyance and thought "How many social media outlets am i going to have to keep up with!?". Since then, I have read a post showing how to use Google+ as a blogger, and I have grown to really enjoy it. Everything i do only is registered somehow with Google, so I can appreciate the "One account for everything" idea. I can really see this replacing Facebook (for me anyway), but one of the biggest challenges I foresee is getting my readers off of facebook and over to Google+. I could be very wrong here, but most everyone i interact with on Google+ are fellow bloggers, not readers. If Google+ could make their layout a little more user friendly, and more people joined I think facebook could disappear just like myspace did. At this point, anything comparing to Facebook will probably gain a lot of users, as there are plenty of people (including myself) that are sick of Facebook and their changes that happen everyday to benefit them and not their users.
So that's my rants about the social media outlets that I use. I can't help but wonder why these outlets are made for the people but are only benefiting the company. What did i forget to include here? Were you nodding you head and saying "I know, right!?"
Let me know in the comments below!
