Veritasium produces videos that I look at regularly, because I'm interested in science.  This one however was an unexpected surprise as it digressed from their usual subject matter

 

This video fills in the gaps in what I've observed but could not come up with a satisfactory explanation.  Over the years my Facebook fans has increased while engagement has gone down. I assumed this was simply a strategy by Facebook to encourage you to buy more ads, but it runs much deeper than that.

 

Last year the Washington Post reported that The US Department of State spent $630,000 (of OUR money) to acquire 2 million page likes and then realized only 2% were engaged.

 

If you run a Facebook fan page you really should invest 9 minutes and watch this video.  It will explain a lot. 

 

 

Again the remedy would appear to be to simply get rid of fake fans, but Facebook makes this seemingly simple task so tedious that it is not worth the effort.

 

The same thing appears to be happening on Twitter to, but there is 3rd party software that help you identify and remove fake followers which I do every 6 months or so.

I forgot to mention I discovered the video, I shared above, in another blogger's article:

 

Why Copyblogger Is Killing Its Facebook Page

 

 

 

By the way, I'm not killing my Facebook page.  I'm simply not investing a lot of time engaging with the platform. I'm content with what little traffic and business I go generate from the platform.  

We've been writing and saying this over and over using our own statistics and information. This video captures the point effectively and I've shared it over and over, yet I still see people I've talked with sipping the Kool Aid. I still think you have to have a Facebook page, but I've gotten more traction out of twitter because it allows for a direct connection to "influential" people. 

 

I think I'm going to have to get a green screen and start doing videos. People just interact with those a lot more than they do the written word. Actually I take that back. When I wrote that last Facebook article it proved that engagement actually goes up with content that engages a direct audience. People are reading, but only when it relates directly to what they are doing.