Reach out.

There's been a great deal of talk about the reach, or lack of reach, that Facebook currently has.
On one side there are those who are stating that nothing has changed, and in the main, and as far as I can tell, they are people talking about personal pages, and in that case it is difficult to argue with them.
If an individual uses it to chat to friends on a regular basis then everyone that they expect to see their page will do.
However, and regardless of all the arguments against this, it would appear that those who have band, label, blog pages are seeing their reach to the outside world being limited.
In all the confusion there are plenty of solid arguments being put forth to substantiate any view held, but if you strip them all away it does seem that interaction between bands and fans, blogs and their readers, DIY stores and their customers, has recently had a bit of a downturn.
Coincidentally this has all happened around the time that Facebook was floated on the market.
Another coincidence is that the emails and messages sent that outline their ad rates, and how availing yourself of them will enable your page to reach a much wider audience, started to arrived around the same time.
It's a bit of a pain in the rear.
While I use Facebook to promote the blog I also see it as something that provides the reader the opportunity to engage with what they want.
Instead of coming here and trawling through it piece by piece a person seeing the links on their Facebook wall can just pick and choose what they want to read.
If a political rant isn't your thing then it's easily skipped when coming to the blog from Facebook.
That option seems to have been impacted on, and I don't know why.
I'm no expert in tech matters, and all I can truthfully say is that I'm not falling for a change in perception, but instead commenting on the reality of the current reach.
Right now the page dedicated to the blog has 112 likes to it (less than the hits I get in the first 30 minutes of posting a new blog update) and my plan to stop posting links on my personal page and just feature them on that page has faltered due to the lack of reach it has.
Even close friends have told me that they know nothing about it until I directly asked them.
They haven't seen a link to it, or posts from it on my own wall, even though they have been shared.
So click here for the facebook blog page and sign up to it if you want, and in a weeks time I'll revisit this and see if there's been any change in the reach. and I'll fill you in.