Facebook now tells admins how many people a page post is being "served" to.

In an apparent move to be more transparent about Facebook's Newsfeed algorithm, it appears that the text that shows to administrators under each Facebook page post has changed.

It used to read, "x number of people saw this post" and now it reads, "This post was served to x number of people".

As a page administrator for many high profile pages (and low profile pages for that matter), I can say that this is somewhat a relief.  I can't tell you how many people would ask me why their entire population wouldn't "see" a post that we put out on the page. Many times we were asked if we could do anything to make it better, as though it was something we were doing wrong, until we explained Facebook's Newsfeed Algorithm.

Now it is more apparent that Facebook is choosing which of our content to "serve" up to the people who have liked the page and which content is doomed to sit stagnant on our timeline.

There is hope however, besides the apparent "Boost Post" option where you pay Facebook to make sure your content gets into everyone's newsfeed, and that is to post smart.

Facebook's newsfeed algorithm is based on people's "likes and interests" which they fill out when they create a profile.  It also looks at what types of content people engage with not just on your page but on other pages as well. If you have a tendency to click on video links, then you are going to get a LOT more video links in your newsfeed.

If you have an important message to get out to your followers, you should create content that is in alignment with the best posting types on your page, as shown by your Facebook Page insights.

Here's how:

In this case, it looks like our links are being served to the widest audience, so we should continue with this trend. That is great news since we will soon be starting a website for this page.

Interesting also is that our regular status updates (without images or links) get served to the second widest audience, and photos are a close 3rd.

You can also click the "Top Posts from Pages You Watch" to see how other pages' content is being "served" to their audiences.  Overall, I like this new language, as it makes a lot more sense to people about where their content ends up (besides making nice decorations for their Facebook pages).

What are your thoughts or questions?

Important changes coming for Admins of Facebook Pages.

Here is one of the side-effects we experience from managing so many Facebook Pages for our clients: we get to see changes to Facebook Pages before other users.  One such example happened this morning when we logged in to manage a client's page.

We had a notification about some interesting changes coming to Facebook Pages starting February 20, 2014 and only for certain users.

According to Facebook:

On a Page post, the name of the person who posted will be listed below the name of your Page next to Posted by. On a Page comment, the name of the person who commented will be listed below the comment next to Commented on by. 

 Facebook went on to assure users that only people who help manage your Page can see this information. 

You will also be able to see who posted or scheduled posts for your page, taking the guesswork out of who to ask for information.

Apparently it will not affect past posts, only posts that are created after this feature is activated.

My team and I are excited about this feature. Sometimes our clients like to jump on an post and we have a hard time knowing if it was them or one of us. Score one for Facebook!

Facebook Pages Not Loading for Administrators - November 8, 2013

As of 9:45am Central Time on November 8, 2013, we began experiencing a major outage of all 30 pages that we are administrators for. One minute they were working fine, and then suddenly, they wouldn't load into the browser.

We currently have access to our admin panel, activity logs and page settings, but can not get the Timeline to load, nor can we update our pages with any content.

Internet service providers do not seem to play a role in the problem because our administrators use different providers to access the pages on Facebook. Here is a screenshot of what the page looks like when an administrator tries to load access it: 

We have sent a request to our Facebook representative and will let everyone know what the reply is and meanwhile will continue to update this article as we get information.

UPDATE 10:45am November 8, 2013 - 

We have been successful in accessing our admin pages again after one hour of trying. Nothing yet has been issued from Facebook, but we'll update as soon as we know.

10/21/13 - The Day that Facebook BROKE DOWN - Trouble with Groups, Commenting, and Posting on Facebook.

Today will go down in the history books as the day that Facebook broke down. The problems seemed to be coming from the computer at first, but the more we dig, the more we are discovering that this is a wide-spread Facebook issue.

The problems as we see it:

Facebook Groups - users are unable to upload any media nor can they post messages. Admins are unable to add or remove group members nor can they pin or unpin posts from the top of the group.

Commenting - users are unable to post comments to their friends posts. The error looks something like this: 

"Likes" not working - error messages also occur when you are trying to like another person's comment.

Posting - users are getting error messages when trying to post status updates. This blog reports that several people are experiencing this message when trying to post an update, but this problem seems to be more sporadic.

How wide-spread is it?

We have several friends all over the country and the world as a matter of fact and all of them are reporting some kind of trouble, although not all of their troubles are the same. This site also indicates that users from all over the world are experiencing issues as well.

What is Facebook doing about it?

So far Facebook has not published anything online about this event. We're curious to see what the issue really is because it isn't just in the United States. Users in Hong Kong are even experiencing these issues.

We tried to file an error report on Facebook's support site and received this error message:

Updates will continue as we learn more.

Update#2:  At 9:44am CST, I attempted to comment on a friend's post that she made on my timeline. It seems the issues will continue to be sporadic.

Update: Looks like most major news outlets have picked up on the outage. They are reporting that things are getting back to normal although posting will be sporadic. Comment below and let us know how things are going for you.

Also, you might want to tune into Facebook's News Room for any updates straight from Facebook (although it seems that they have their hands full and can't get to an announcement just yet).

Facebook Storage Failure Error runs rampant across multiple browsers- April 28, 2013

Facebook Storage Failure occurs when you try to upload a picture to Facebook.

Today our team noticed a wide-spread issue between several of our managed Facebook pages. We kept receiving the Storage Failure upload error when trying to update the pages' timeline with a photo.

While trying multiple times on Firefox, Chrome and Explorer, we noticed the problem existed on all of these browsers, yet remained intermittent.

Firefox seems to have a better success rate after multiple tries.

Upon researching Facebook's known issues, we found several cases where this has come up, but not as of 2013, so something must have changed overnight. We'll continue to monitor the current Facebook blog.

During our research, we came across several recent mentions from users who were experiencing this same issue as of today, April 28, 2013.

Should you encounter this issue, you may wish to try several times to get the photo to upload and you may also wish to report the issue to Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/397722186921491?rdrhc

What you should and should NOT post on Facebook

This past political season has been full of heated debates, finger pointing, lies and mis-direction and not necessarily all from one political party or the other. It seems that everywhere you looked there was someone posting on Social Networks something political in nature.

One of my favorite Memes on Facebook are the SomeeCards that are constantly being posted and this one is truly reflective of the past political season:

But even with as many political posts as I came across on Facebook, nothing was quite so alarming as some of the posts found on a newly elected Kansas State Representative's facebook page.  Now it's one thing to post such content on your page and keep the privacy settings limited to just your friends and entirely different thing to post that content to your page publicly for all the world to see.

Rightfully so, people began complaining about his Facebook content to the local news station, which eventually prompted an investigative report which aired on the 10 o'clock news.  I was asked for my professional opinion related to these posts, which I replied immediately that they were in violation of Facebook's rules of conduct.

See the entire interview here:

If you read Facebook's rules, you can clearly see several items which the Kansas State Representative was in violation of.  I explained how you can report the images to Facebook to have them deleted.  Facebook has been known to close your account if they find you in violation of the rules, so it's best to play things on the safe side, especially when you are a public official.

Visit the Facebook Community Standards Page

 After reviewing the rules and the images and videos on the good Representative's page, it was clear that they were in violation. Even though the images were posted by someone else and shared to the page, the Representative can still be held accountable for the content.

There are ways to report the images to Facebook, which did on several of the images. Surprisingly enough, Facebook refused to take the offensive images down.  It's not clear whether more people need to complain before Facebook will actually enforce their own rules, or if it was just a matter of not having a real person to follow up with the claim.  We'll make sure to stay on top of the situation to see what Facebook's response will be.

For now, it is unclear what is really allowed on Facebook. The rules should be evident enough, but with no one to enforce them, it really is like having no rules at all.

What do you think? You can watch the interview and see the images in question for yourself and we'd love to hear what you would do.

Why Facebook will have to start charging for Pages.

As a Social Media Manager, I have access to dozens of Facebook pages and I am also listed as a Facebook Developer.  This usually means that I find out about interesting things going on with Facebook before most normal users.

Today, as I was perusing one of my client's Page Insights, I noticed a pop-up message that was asking me if I would like to do a survey. A survey for Facebook? How can I resist? I have LOTS of feedback for Facebook!

So the survey started innocently enough. It asked what I liked about Facebook Pages. For me, the things I love most about the Facebook Pages are the customizable options with the Timeline covers and the applications with custom tabs.  Things like that really make me happy, but I am kind of geeky that way.

The next question from Facebook asked me what I DIDN'T like about the pages... even daring me to "BE AS SPECIFIC AS POSSIBLE".  Oh boy, they asked for it.  Here is what I said:

1.  I don't like that Facebook applications (the custom tabs) cannot be accessed with your mobile device.  I have been reading so many studies that indicate more and more people are accessing Facebook with their mobile devices rather than a computer so it didn't make sense to me WHY we can't see the custom tabs on Facebook Mobile apps.

2. I don't like that the Facebook mobile app didn't allow for SHARING of posts.  Sharing is the most important form of engagement that your page could possibly receive. It pretty much guarantees you new likes to your page with high amounts of sharing.  Why can't we share posts and pictures from pages with our Mobile Apps?  Now, I have seen that there can be ways to do it, but it is very limited.

3. Finally, there needs to be a better solution for advertising on Facebook.  I have the ability to drive ad traffic to custom tabs which, if done correctly, can be used like a landing page. But what I want is for it to be a legitimate "choice" under Facebook advertising to drive traffic to your custom tab or better yet, give us the ability to drive all new incoming traffic to a landing page like in the olden days.

Facebook then said that they were considering offering Businesses a special "Package" for their Page with a long list of great things that they said would be included, which I am putting here for your review (along with my personal reactions to each):

1.  Mobile apps that will show custom tabs (Hooray!)
2. Availability of Email and Chat to report problems with your page (What's this going to cost?)
3. 5 Free Promoted Posts each month (Nothing's free on Facebook anymore...)
4. Access to PHONE SUPPORT for your Pages (now I KNOW this is going to cost us...)
5. Removal of all ads from the right-hand side of your page (Really? This seems lame...)
6. Option to respond to comments and wall-posts through private message (Taking things off the mat... I like that)
7. Option to post to page as an employee personality and not the page (we sort of already have this option)
8. Prominent Business listing in Facebook search (as opposed to what?)
9. Access to yearly discussions with Business Page owners who are "successful" (I already do this as a professional, year round, it's what I DO)
10. A listing of other Pages in your general field and how their success compares to yours (this could be good or bad, depending on what your line of work is)

I'm sure there were a couple of more options there, but unfortunately I didn't have the foresight to write all of them down.  Once I was finished giving them feedback as to how "valuable" I found all of the special options, they asked me if I would consider paying $50 a month for this Package.

Many of these options really won't affect my client's visibility but it could affect a lot of others in a positive way. For example, one could easily spend more than $50 on promoted posts each month, which to me really is worth the funds as it greatly increases your Page's visibility more than the traditional Facebook ad.

The truth is, now that Facebook is trading on the market, they have to look into all possible revenue streams. Advertising is pulling in a lot right now, and they have changed their Newsfeed Edgerank Algorithm so that Pages feel the need to promote their posts in order to stay in front of their followers' top stories.  Finding ways to "sweeten the pot" for Pages both offers businesses a way to have more advanced Pages than other businesses as well as adds an extra revenue stream for Facebook.

Businesses should prepare their budgets for 2013 to allow for extra Facebook spending if they want to stay on the cutting edge.