How to See Facebook Page Updates

Have you been wondering lately why you don't see as many updates from the Pages you've liked on Facebook? Maybe you haven't noticed, but those of us who run Pages definitely have. A friend of mine, who follows us through FB, asked me the other day "Why haven't you been posting on your blog lately?" and I told her that we still post six days a week, she just isn't getting the updates. Pretty Providence has almost 2,000 Likes on Facebook. However, the company has made some changes lately that have been discouraging. Only about 6% of each Page's fans will see their updates. They have implemented a new button where after a page posts something, they are shown that about 6% (so about 100 of 2,000 fans) have seen their update. Then they give the page admin an option to pay $5, $10, $15 and so-on to show more people your post. It would cost us $10 each time we post just for FB to show our post to all of the people who have liked our page.

Yes, they have the right to do this and to make a profit from their website, and since 800 million of us use Facebook, we go along with it. The thing is though, that if I like a page it's because I want to see their updates in my news feed, and that is not happening most of the time anymore. There is a way to get around this though, thankfully, so that you can control which Pages you get updates from. I made up visual instructions for you in case you want to do this.

How to see updates you want to see on FB: 

Since this Facebook stuff has been seeming less and less useful to us in getting info to our lovely readers, we have been spending more time on Twitter and just started using Google + too. Google + hasn't caught on yet with as many people, but I think it's going to! Especially since businesses, blogs, and other people who care about their updates being shown to people are using it more and more in place of Facebook. I spent some time exploring it yesterday and really liked it. Here are a few reasons I think it is going to blow up in the near future:

1 It is there with all of your other google stuff! Gmail, Drive, Google +, etc. You sign in once. Convenient.
2 You can edit your posts: make a mistake, or spelling error? Forget to add the link? No worries.. You can just edit the post and fix it real quick and it's back up, correctly.
3 Hangouts: Group video calls with up to 10 people - super neat! You can even share docs with everyone in the hangout. This seems like a great tool for business meetings, family calls, planning events, and so many other things.
4 You can make and label circles - control what you see from other people, and they don't see where you put them! Like, no crazy political updates every day if you don't want! Without offending anyone! Also you can follow people without them needing to add you back, and vice versa, which just makes things less awkward and more friendly.
5 Huddle: Start a conversation with up to 50 people on Google + mobile, think family trip planning?! Amazing. Then you can mute the conversation when you are no longer interested.
6 Privacy. You decide with each post or update exactly how private or public you want it to be. It's easy to find, and then you control what others' see from you, without having to go through a big maze to make sure your personal information isn't being shared with the entire world. 

There are a lot of other things that are cool too, learn more by reading this G+ Cheat Sheet!

So, we hope you will keep up with us on Facebook using the lists, but you can also expect a lot of good stuff from us over at G+, we are thinking we need to try the hangout thing soon, and we would love to hang out with YOU! Join us there! 

+ If you run a blog, FB page, or business and would like to share this graphic with your readers, you are totally welcome to! We all want our "likers" to see our updates! I ask that you please give credit and link back to this post. Thank you!

+ This post may be linked up to one of these parties.