Social Media Woes
When I had far fewer Facebook followers, I considered shutting the whole thing down, deleting my page, and walking away. I realize Facebook needs to make money, but I wish it didn’t expect to get so much of it from Facebook Pages who want people that have already liked them to see the content they post. I don’t mind seeing advertisements on the sidebar, and even in the newsfeed itself from the likes of McDonald’s, Lyft, and Target (or whatever), but good gawd–I can’t believe that I am expected to pay $50 each and every time I post something so that my established audience will see it.
Luckily for me, I usually share images, so Facebook’s algorithms give them a leg up to begin with, and people tend to click “like” or “share,” which ensures most people see them. But when I post links or when I did a contest recently, the vast majority of people who have “liked” my page simply do not see it.
Just yesterday I read that Facebook is going to further devalue text-only posts from Pages specifically. I don’t pay to use Facebook (I have experimented with but one promoted post), so I have no legs to stand on when I complain, but this enrages me, all the more because this month I got my 100,000th “like” on Facebook. After blogging and comic-ing for nearly five years, I’m finally finding my audience, and now Facebook is increasingly holding it ransom.
I find myself jealous of YouTubers: they have a platform to post their content where people are able to subscribe to them and get updates on new videos. YouTube is not making them pay to reach subscribers. Quite the opposite: creators get paid by YouTube. There is no such service for image creators like myself. I have a website where I post my content, and I share it across Facebook, Twitter, and (just recently) Tumblr. Social media isn’t going to reward me for getting likes, shares, retweets, favorites, mentions, and click-throughs. I’m using their service, not the other way around.
And it’s not even that I need to get paid when people consume my comics. I have Patreon for that, as well as books and a very tiny Etsy store. But I do want to keep the audience I have grown without spending what little money I do make from my Beatrice-ings.
Until the interwebs create a YouTube-like space for sharing images, I think I’m just going to have to whine about it. And I’ll just have to hope that the 100,000+ people on Facebook realize that if they really want to see the content I create, they’re much better off with Patreon, RSS, email subscriptions, and Tumblr.
