An Ugly Truth. Building My Facebook Page Is Sadly Teaching Me That Click-Bait And Silly Memes Work.

Can’t anyone be serious anymore?

Photo by Thirdman on Pexels

I have had a Facebook business page for over a year. I decided that I wanted to build it up so it could better serve as a platform for reaching out, connecting, and engaging with others. Here is what the responses to my posts are teaching me.

Unfortunately, it is not all good news.

Let’s set the stage. In early November 2021 my Facebook page, The Coping Expert (link), had a robust following of 13 followers. Yes, 13. Today, mid-May 2022, it has over 7,600 followers.

Like everyone else, I am always interested in building my site. So, I am interested in what people respond to.

Let’s take a look at a couple of posts to see what people like.

On Wednesday, May 18, 2022, I posted 3 posts at about 7pm in the evening. Here they are.

Image is from author.

I checked back an hour later. Which post do you think was the most successful?

Number 1 had 8 likes, 0 comments, 0 shares. Number 2 had 5 likes, 0 comments, 0 shares. Number 3 had 62 likes, 3 comments, and 17 shares.

It is no wonder that the internet in inundated with click-bait and memes. They work. And this is just a very, very mild example. I have seen many, many more dramatic examples of the same phenomena. Over and over, I see people respond to content that is more superficial, less deep, and more funny.

What people told me to do.

I have a good friend who manages two Facebook sites, one with over 70k followers and one with over 200k followers. I asked him how to build my site. Do you know what he told me? I quote, “Jim, post the snarky sh*t. People LOVE sharing that sh*t!”.

Sadly, I am finding this to be largely true.

About a week ago, I showed my Facebook page to my adult son and his girlfriend. She immediately went to the funniest post and shared it…