Those of you who know me, also know I have a checkered past with Facebook. Way back when they first stopped allowing fans to see our updates, I responded by changing my birthday every month. I also have an unfortunate affinity for trolling racists and bullies. That’s actually how I learned how to type quickly. Anyway all that, plus lots of political irreverence, led to me being silenced across all the social platforms. No one ever tells you that. You just notice diminishing engagement.
I’ve started the Spread The Word series, however, and ended up on the morning news, talking about trendy hot spots in Chicago. Even that hasn’t been allowed to reach a mass social media audience, but it seems I am on the right track. Meta as an institution is an impossible monolith. Meta employees who like what you are doing are a different story. I was brought in, and given some game.
Key Takeaways
I don’t want to just brag about being at Facebook. If you’re reading this I want to give you something you can use. Here are a few pointers I picked up from the conversation.
Know who you are. That will determine what you do.
Are you a subject matter expert, pushing one product or service? Then just post that repeatedly. The algorithms will find you. Or, are you pushing yourself / your personality as the product? This is where you can post a variety of things but work on what you will sell your fans. In either case you are an influencer, and posting several times a day means it’s your full time job. The algorithms are tuned to notice that as well, and search results will reflect it.
Now let me say this… Like being shadow banned, these things are not expressly laid out for you. I just asked certain questions during the interview. The answers I got were not definitive, but they confirmed many suspicions. Part of the social media business model entails not being predictable, this helps them to avoid spam/phishing/hacking and all manner of online attacks. Their employees don’t even know for sure, but I appreciate the outreach, and I’ll be testing out several strategies moving forward.