SUMMARY: Facebook is only reaching 16%... I don't want anyone to be left out, so I'll be posting updates to this blog from now on. I had originally set up my Facebook fan page in order to send news out to everyone interested in a medium that would be as easy for you to consume. I figured almost everyone has Facebook, right? (Truth: I don't use Facebook on a personal level).
I posted a poll. I posted updates. I posted fun things that I thought might be enjoyed.
Then I learned about Edgerank.
What is Edgerank, you ask? It's Facebook's way of making money from fan pages. The simplest explanation is that when you post something to your page, approximately 16% of the people who have liked it see your post, unless you use a little 'Boost Post' button. That button will send it out to more people's news feeds. That button isn't free :).
I don't blame Facebook for wanting to make money. The amount of data they move around is intense, and expensive, and they have shareholders to please. I blame myself for not being more educated in how it all works, and to be honest, I've started testing limited advertising of my books through their ad system, and it's been performing pretty well (I'll have a more detailed post on that once my experiments are complete).
The solution then is to adapt, and so I'm going to. I want to reach as many of you as want to be reached. I want you to be able to communicate your thoughts and ideas and say whatever you want to say (as long as it isn't vulgur). To that end, I'm going to shift my updates over here, to my blog. It's a central repository where you can all pick up whatever bits of information YOU want. Whether it is just 'how many words of book X have you written?' or 'hey Michael, Balance was great but the ending sucked.'
I'll post the links to the blog on the Facebook page, and to Twitter, and here are instructions on how to use RSS if you aren't familiar with it:
1. Pick an RSS reader. I use Feedly. It's free, and I think it's awesome.
2. I put all my writing related stuff under 'writing' as one of the categories, so, if you're using Feedly, you can click on the 'Add Content' button in the top left, and then paste this link in:
http://mrforbes.com/blog/category/writing/feed/
That way, it'll push new posts to you. If you have other authors you like to follow... I think most of them have blogs, and you can do the same thing for them too.