This isn’t exactly news that anyone is going to care about — it was something I’ve actually been wanting to do for a while, but simply hadn’t done due to the massive amount of procrastination I do on a daily basis — but I finally got rid of the Xadara Facebook page, to the dismay of probably not a single person on Earth.
Why, exactly?
I say this all for what it may be worth to other small time bloggers, content creators or what have you, who may have Facebook pages attached to whatever media they make and see virtually nothing from the page — this entry is for you.
To answer why, in simple form, I could say this: I got nothing out of the page. That really could sum up it, but it’s worth going a bit deeper into things to really understand how this isn’t just something related to a low-performing page but one aspect of many that’s wrong with Facebook, and social media in general.
The page was, in effect, dead. It simply had no growth, minimal interaction, and honestly (much like the rest of Facebook) was depressing as fuck to even look at.
Growth, as I mentioned, was non existent — stagnant like a backyard pool in the south that’s filled with nothing but rain water. It grew early on, but then just kind of stopped. Slowly it had actually shrunk, but that was due to people who had liked the page eventually deactivating or deleting their accounts outright. Yeah, not the most encouraging thing.
Then you see actual interaction rates… they were more pathetic than you may even think. We’re talking, if I was lucky on a given day 10% of my audience might be shown a post I made. When you add in the probability for people to actually decide to click the link and read, well, that rate became maybe a few people at most actually clicking the link on Facebook and visiting the site.
The stats don’t lie — I maybe get a hit or two a day at absolute most to the site originating from Facebook, and even then I somewhat question if they originate from the actual page as opposed to other possible shares of entries via others sharing it naturally. Oh who am I kidding, on one does that. Still, the hits occasionally come, once in a blue moon maybe.
This leads to the question of why? Naturally you may think it’s the content itself — it just isn’t catching people. That’s certainly a factor to some degree — if someone isn’t interested they won’t click, but if they don’t actually get the chance to see the content how can they say “no” to clicking the link and checking it out?
That’s where the problem originates: Facebook intentionally limits the visibility of your posts unless you pay to promote them! It doesn’t matter what you post, how many tags you put on it (do people even use hashtags as search criteria on Facebook? The hell if I know anymore.) No matter what you do, Facebook will artificially limit the reach of a post.
This, all while, for whatever fucking reason, flavor of the week meme pages talking about how “thicc” some anime “waifu” is or some page where spoiled 20 somethings who’s parents handed them everything complain about how “boomers” ruined the world get interaction left and right — all while being so disposable the creators will delete them without seemingly a care in the world the moment the next flash in the pan trend comes up.
Content with no lasting value is rewarded, while something substantial, regardless of the nature of the subject matter, is seemingly suppressed from people even being given the choice of if they want to see it or not.
At that point, why would anyone want to keep the page up? All it’s doing is helping Facebook have another spot to put an ad in, and gives them an excuse to beg me to “promote” my post every day, something I’m not going to do.
To say I’m sick of Facebook on a whole, though, would be an understatement — this is just one thing of a great many which have made be despise the social network, and much of the concept of social media in general.
I’ll end with this, though — if you feel like your Facebook page is a waste, that’s because it probably is, but not by any fault of your own. Tell Zuckerberg to fuck off by un-publishing or, even better; deleting it and moving on with your life, and your projects. You’ll be happier, I think. I already am.