Facebook Tip | Interest Lists

We have known for a while that Facebook filters information and that not all of your business page likers will see all the content you publish.  Facebook then added the ‘reach‘ counter at the bottom of each post – another great way to stress businesses out.   Many small businesses understand the marketing power than comes from a buzzing business page and interactive following.  I’ve previously written about the promote button – would you pay for Facebook.  Understanding the relationship between these 3 points is key.

  • what your average reach is
  • what your optimum time is
  • what media your fans prefer. (status updates, links, images etc. )
But even with ALL this information we do still need to be aware of the human factor … people sadly don’t always behave in the manner to which we would like and there will be huge variations from day to day.  Example – the majority of my Facebook followers will be mums in business – having all reduced their workload for the 6 weeks summer holidays in turn means they have been spending less time on social media = reduced interaction. Now it might be October BUT it inevitably takes us weeks to get back into a regular business routine.    The reduced interaction with a page on Facebook means you no longer see this on your feed as much as you did previously – can you see a cycle here??
The only way to keep on top of your favourite pages is to
  1.  interact with your favourite pages
  2.  manually check them regularly on Facebook.
You have probably seen the following update doing the rounds on Facebook :-

FINALLY!! Facebook has advised us of a way for ALL of our likers to see our updates! If you’d like to stay up to date with all the new events, please follow these instructions to make sure you don’t miss out on anything!

1. Head over to JoanneDewberry.co.uk Facebook page from your computer (it won’t work from your mobile).

2. On the right hand side on the page right next to the “like” button there is a drop down box.

3. Click on that drop down box and click on the “add to interest list“.

That way you will not miss any of our updates. Thank you for so much for your ongoing support 🙂

Sounds perfect right? Well I’ve been looking into this today and what actually happens is you add this page to your ‘interest list’ – so what is an interest list? Facebook says – “Interest lists are an optional way to organize the content you’re interested in on Facebook. You can create your own interest lists based on the things you care about, or subscribe to other people’s lists”.

Brilliant so we now have a list that is entirely made up of everything we want to look at from people to pages to groups.  However to look at it you do need to find the ‘interest list’!!!  The interest list tab is located on the your homepage’s left hand sidebar.

My only concern here is how many people will use this list or just stick to their homepage content?  Do you use interest lists?? Is this the way forward to better follower interaction and more sales for small businesses??  What do you think??

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6 Comments

  1. October 15, 2012 / 11:27 am

    Facebook is complicated enough without adding lists, so I won’t be adding any pages to lists.

    I have all my friends in lists and check those manually out of work time. In work time, I only check my feed, which only has business pages (like yours, which is how I came here and commented 🙂 )

  2. Lianne-carla Savage
    October 15, 2012 / 12:33 pm

    Interest lists are great in theory but there are a few key issues.

    Instead of being posted on the newsfeed seperately all posts from pages within the list are grouped together so if you aren’t the most popular 2/3 pages in the list you will never get on the newsfeed.

    If the problem is that people don’t go to pages and tend to spend most of the time on the newsfeed then would they look at interest lists?

    Can people even find their interest lists? They aren’t very prominent so the average user could easily create their lists and not be able to find them.

    By grouping pages by topic then it places your posts into more of a close competition. The flipside is if people go to that particular list then they are looking for what you have to offer.

    At the end of the day it comes right back to creating great content that forms a brand experience. Brand defines any business from it’s competition and the stronger the brand and the more rewarding the experience the more likely you will be attracting the right sorts of visitors and fans for your business and give them a reason to keep coming back.

  3. Tracy Martin
    October 15, 2012 / 12:38 pm

    Yes, I use interest lists! Find them really useful – I use them for keeping track on my favourite pages, those I buy from, those I network with, and those that are local to me. My newsfeed is then used for updates from friends etc! I think they are great – and a great tool for time management so I don’t get distracted by a buiness feed when I am ‘not working’!

  4. October 15, 2012 / 1:23 pm

    What I find really interesting is that I get to see lots of posts from pages I have liked, but never interacted with, yet the pages I do go and take a look at don’t feature any more prominently. I haven’t set up interest lists yet, not sure that I will to be honest, as I seem to get the info eventually! For my page, the reach is so variable. I can post two things consecutively and the reach can be vastly different. I haven’t asked people to put my page on an interest list – if they see the post, then they are getting my feeds anyway! If they don’t see the request, then I’m no further forward!
    I’m just grateful that we have facebook out there to spread and grow our businesses, it must have been so much harder and slower before!

  5. October 19, 2012 / 11:08 am

    I don’t think most people will bother, to be honest. I think it comes down to this – if you offer people something useful or interesting they’ll stick around, if not you’ll drop of their radar. Rather than focusing on the latest tip or trick, I focus on giving people what they want. I hope that’ll serve me well when Facebook makes changes, too.

    • Joanne
      Author
      October 19, 2012 / 11:18 am

      I agree with your thinking .. I personally believe its the businesses with 1,000+ fans who then see the reach is only 176 people who start freaking out about numbers. In reality people like pages for a vast amount of reasons and actually aren’t really that interested in your business. Like ladders spring to mind.