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Should I start over with a new page or group, or should I ditch Facebook entirely?
My love is history. I’m capable of making good, narrated long-form videos, but mostly I focus on a written product, which is what made me stick with Facebook for so long. My history topics have focused on the Pacific Northwest, which I’m aware might be severely limiting where building audience is concerned. But, over the years, I built that audience organically to several thousand, and the reviews of my content have always been overwhelmingly positive.
Then Ted Bundy happened.
I wrote a piece about the Bachman-Turner Overdrive song “Takin’ Care of Business” which was recorded in Seattle. A man that many believed was a pizza delivery guy ended up stopping by and suggested some piano would sound great on the track and they actually let him sit down and play on a track to see how it would sound. They ended up keeping it, but nobody knew who the piano/pizza guy was for a long time. Turns out he was an employee at the studio, and the piece I wrote goes into who he was, and that he had grown up in the area and was a classmate of Ted Bundy’s. The inclusion of Ted Bundy and a picture of him was enough to trigger Facebook to declare that I was “glorifying” a serial killer, and they restricted my page in every way. Reach went to near zero when a normal post I made was getting what I thought was great engagement…hundreds of likes, hundreds of shares sometimes, and dozens and dozens of comments.
My audience numbered only in the thousands, but it was an engaged and interested audience that liked my content. Now, even with a boosted post, I’m lucky to get a dozen likes and 2 comments, all thanks to Ted Bundy. I went through all the appeal processes to no avail, and now almost a year later, I’m still kind of stuck at zero reach, even to my own several thousand followers. After the worst of the restrictions were lifted after a month, like an inability to advertise or boost (which I never really did anyway), I tried boosting a post, and it made little difference. Still today, each time I log in to the page, I’m met with the warning about how I may lose my page, and it is apparently permanently stuck on this “not recommended” status. Of course, I cannot appeal anywhere now that I’ve gone through that process once, which was rejected. The offending post is still up, but they removed the one photo of Ted.
So…eventually I’d like to market a pair of books I’m working on. One is nearing completion. That audience would have been open and willing…certainly not a cold call, but now I can’t reach them.
“Shorts” aren’t really my thing, and I don’t know that selling a historical drama book could be helped by making and posting short-form videos. Long-form could, but those aren’t small undertakings and I’m starting at zero thanks to Ted Bundy. Now that Facebook took my small thunder away, I’m not sure what to do. It really isn’t about money…I get the charge out of the engagement, and that people thank me for my story-telling and complement my writing, and for educating them about things they hadn’t known before. I always figured the money thing would take care of itself one day when I actually put out a marketable product, like a book. But now I just don’t know. I have one of those books nearing completion, but it feels like nobody is going to see it when its done.
I don’t know TikTok at all, I’ve never understood the draw of Twitter…as you can see by the above screed, I’m completely lacking in skills where it concerns brevity or being concise. I’ve never really used Instagram, so I’m not sure how it might be an avenue. Starting essentially from scratch, what should I do?
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1 Reply
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Why haven’t you removed the problem post entirely? Might or might not help, but what do you have to lose?
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