Facebook Foible a Blessing in Disguise

Facebook had some problems this weekend. Many of us couldn’t see more than one page in our news feeds. I got this message: “This stream is unavailable at this time. Please try again soon.” With all the work business pages have to do to keep up with our social media marketing, I wondered what to do? in the absence of the Facebook news feed. It turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

To access pages this weekend and comment on their posts, I had to click on the links to businesses’ profile pages, since they weren’t showing up in my news feed, since my news feed wasn’t showing up. There was no other way to get to those pages that I love to engage with and rely on for great posts.

I decided to go to my profile page, thank God it was still loading :), click on my “223 people like this” link on the left of the profile page to access my fans, then in the upper left-hand corner of the pop-up box, hit the drop down arrow and select “pages.” The box then lists all the business pages that “like” my page. I could  click on my faves to comment on and like their posts.

It was then that I made some very interesting discoveries.

First of all, 65 business pages like my page, http://www.facebook.com/InTouchPromotions. Some of these pages are new likers to In Touch Promotions and others had been fans for awhile and I just didn’t know it. I went to them right away to like them and post on them that I looked forward to following their posts. It’s very important to me to engage with those pages that are fans of mine.

I learned that I don’t see all the posts from all the pages all the time and I do miss out on some posts even when I’m on FB all day checking that news feed.

I also realized that some of the pages that I comment on regularly are not likers of my page. I decided to cut down on posting comments on these pages’ posts, since increasing page engagement with my page is my goal. If they’re not likers of my page, they can’t comment on my page. So, after a point, it doesn’t help me to keep commenting on their posts. Sometimes their fans become my fans, so it’s important to balance that fine line between spending time commenting on pages that won’t comment back and concentrating on those pages that engage with mine.

Lesson learned for me: to increase others’ engagement with my wall posts, I have to constantly reach out to those pages who like my page, and comment on their wall posts. Part of that is monitoring new business-page likers of my page, and returning the favor – much like on Twitter.

When was the last time you looked to see which business pages like your Facebook page? Chances are there are cool pages that you don’t even know are following you and could give you a chance to increase your fans and engagement with your Facebook biz page. Literally a blessing in disguise!