Thursday, May 31st

Who said the year could fly by so quickly? I can’t believe it’s the end of May. And technically, as I’m writing this Friday morning, it’s the beginning of June. The year is almost half over? I guess I should start thinking about all the things, in January, that I wanted to accomplish this year and see how I’m doing on that.

But thinking about that makes me stare off into space, and forget about my coffee, and not write anything… and if I forget about my coffee I’m going to remain sleepy. And then I’ll be sleepy and have cold coffee. Which means I’ll be cranky. Let’s not start the day off that way, eh?!

Yeah. Rather than get cranky about cold coffee, I’ll get cranky about Facebook. I have a pretty active Facebook page for HaldeCraft. I try not to spam people with stuff I’m trying to sell; even when trying to sell things I try to talk like a human, get people to interact with me, get to know them. I encourage people to ask me questions there and send me photos of their HaldeCraft items.

Facebook has already made it harder for me to interact with people by making it so they can’t post on my page. For example, Person X can no longer make a post to ask if I make ___-shaped soap in ___ fragrance, instigating a conversation between others who see that post about what shapes they’d like to see in that fragrance or what fragrances they’d like to see in that design. They have to send me a message. I can then choose to post about it, but … still.

And now they’re rolling out what they call “Promoted Posts.” Basically what that is… is the opportunity for them to charge me to post something. Well, not charge me to make a post, but charge me for them to show that post to other people. This new algorithm they’re rolling out only shows my HaldeCraft posts to people who already regularly interact with HaldeCraft. I can see from my stats that I’m running a good 30-40% interaction; but Facebook would like some money from me in order to push certain posts that I choose to pay for into the news feeds of people who have maybe “liked” HaldeCraft but have chosen not to pay that much attention to me (which I don’t take personally; everyone uses Facebook for something different).

I’m not sure how I feel about that. I don’t want to lose anyone who might miss these changes and then wonder in six months where I am, but I also don’t want to pay to put my post out in front of someone who has already chosen to “hide” my posts or not pay attention to them. That’s too pushy for me. Yes, I believe in self-promotion, but I also believe in Not Being a Dick.

So. Hrm. Well then. Things to think about!