My friend, this is Dave Hayes The Weather Nut writing to you on my website WesternMassWeather.com, and what follows below is very important to our future connection.
I assume you’ve landed here because you value my work, and if that’s the case, I value your readership and support and hope to continue to earn it.
Facebook Might Be Hiding My Work From You
As you may know, constantly-changing algorithms (especially Facebook’s) threaten to hide my daily reporting from your screen of choice.
Facebook does this by suppressing my daily posts/updates, possibly due to lack of interaction, your personal FB settings, or something entirely illogical.
This can make it seem like I’ve stopped working/reporting, or have left you in the lurch – neither is true, as I publish every day.
In addition, FB’s Notifications have become unreliable and untimely.
We Do The Best With What We’ve Got
Look, we both know that Facebook has unsavory issues associated with it, but it’s probably how you and I connected.
I’m not trying to disparage it – I can be both grateful for it and not like everything about it, so I’m quickly asking you to not disparage them on my FB page, as that could cause problems for me.
Let’s Focus on the Positive and Optimize Our Connection
The purpose of this page you’re on is to provide you with options to keep us together more regularly.
You are busy, as am I, so let’s jump into a Table of Contents to maximize Our Connection.
Table of Contents
—Ways to Stay Connected outside of FB
—How to Optimize Our Connection within FB
—Managing your Mobile Experience
—Review My Work on FB
—Support My Reporting
—Big Gratitude For You
Ways to Stay Connected outside of FB
As you know, FB is not my website, and I’ve little control over it. However, there are multiple contact points in case FB has issues, so please bookmark / write down the following:
—Twitter
—Instagram
—LinkedIn
—My Website
—My Weekly Newsletter
–Email1: davehayes217 @ gmail dot com
–Email2: dave @ westernmassweather dot com
–WHITELIST MY EMAILS: This IS wicked important – if you don’t want to miss out on my content, then make sure to add both of my email addresses to your email contacts right now. This is called “whitelisting” and it makes sure that you won’t miss my emails, as sometimes my emails are mistakenly marked as spam.
How to Optimize our connection within Facebook
It’s best to think of my page on FB as an old-school TV channel.
Back in the day, you couldn’t hold a TV in your hands and have it feed a show into your eyeballs like social media does on our smartphones.
Instead, you had to change the channel to find and watch the show you wanted.
It’s best to think of ALL of your favorite FB pages that way now, including (hopefully) mine.
This is because FB’s algorithm has grown too unreliable and untimely for most users.
Below are some suggestions to help you optimize your Facebook experience within my page:
–Interaction:
FB suggests that to have me show in your Feed more, you must like, comment and share every post to show the algorithm you want to see my content.
–Optimize your Follow Settings (Desktop Users):
1. Open your FB app and search for “Dave Hayes The Weather Nut”
2. Click on my page name
3. Find and click on the “Follow” button to Follow my page
4. It should then say “Following”. If so, click it again and the “Follow Settings” dialog box pops up
5. This has two sections: the first is “Newsfeed” which should have “Favorites” selected, and the second is “Notifications”.
6. In “Notifications” click “Posts” and then click “Standard” and then hit the blue “Update” button.
–Prune your Page List:
If you have pages you are following but haven’t cared about nor seen in a long time, it’s best to unlike and unfollow those, which gives my page a better chance of popping up in your feed as “page competition” is lowered. Here’s how to do it:
1. Go to your personal home page on FB
2. Click on your “About” link in the navigation bar
3. Scroll down past your “About”, “Friends”, “Photos” and “Videos” sections, and keep on scrolling down until you see your “Likes” section.
4. “Likes” contains your list of FB pages you follow (and used to be called “Pages”).
5. Do not hyperventilate! ;-) You may be astonished at how many pages you’ve liked or followed until now!
6. For pages you no longer care about, hover your cursor over the image or page name so the “Follow Settings” dialog box pops up.
7. In that dialog box, click the “Following” link at the bottom, then click “Unfollow This Page”, and then click the blue “Update” button.
8. Do them all at one sitting, or do 5 a day, but pruning your Likes/Follow list on FB should improve performance
Managing your Mobile Experience
Optimize your Follow Settings for Feed (All Mobile Users):
1. Open your FB app and search for “Dave Hayes The Weather Nut”
2. Click on my page name
3. You’ll see my page’s “header” image, my page title, the “liked” button, then “Send Message” button, and three dots a/k/a ellipsis
4. Click the ellipsis, and click “Follow” if you can
5. It should then say “Following”. If so, click it again, click “Favorites” and choose Favorites again (Default is usually selected here).
Android Users: Find My Posts if FB Feed Fails
Step 1:
–Search for Dave Hayes The Weather Nut
–If you click on my page name, you’ll see a header with a horizontal set of links such as the following:
All | Videos | Posts | People | Groups | Events | Photos | Pages | Marketplace | Shop | Places
–You should be defaulted to the “All” link, which shows posts in a mixed up chronological order
–If you click “Posts” it will only show you posts that are related to you, like ones your friends commented on
–You will need to click on my page’s link, or if you see it, a link called “Following” you should see the following buttons (“Liked”, “Sign Up”, and “Message”)
–You should either see my posts in chronological order below that, or you may have to click on a “Posts” link/button to get my newest post up top, second newest just below that, etc.
Step 2:
–Next to “Message” click the ellipsis, which is “…”
–Then go to “Page Settings”
–Then click “Favorites”
–Then switch from “Default” to “Favorites”
IPhone Users: Find My Posts if FB Feed Fails
Step 1:
Search for “Dave Hayes The Weather Nut”:
–Click Dave Hayes The Weather Nut
Step 2:
As you get familiar with the horizontal navigation links and other elements, you will likely see a horizontal navbar set of links (see below):
ALL | POSTS | PEOPLE | GROUPS
You are likely defaulted to “ALL”.
If you are defaulted to “Posts”, click “ALL”, as posts only refer to MOST POPULAR POSTS, not chronologically-ordered posts.
Once you click “All”, below that is my logo, page name, type of page, reviews, and # of followers.
Below that is the beginning of my About section.
Below that is how many posts I’ve published in the past two weeks.
Below that is a “Following” button and a “Message” button
Do not click on Posts, or scroll down from this page to find my recent reports, but instead, click “Following”, which brings you to my page.
Step 3 (if necessary):
Next to the “Liked” and “Sign Up” buttons on my page, click ellipsis, where you can take the following actions:
–Message
–Report Profile
–Block
–Search
–Invite Friends
–Following-Default / Favorites-Favorites
Please click “Favorites”.
At the bottom, you will see three images to click (Unfollow, Default or Favorites)
Make sure to click Favorites here, then click the left-facing arrow in the upper left to go back to my page.
Then scroll down and you can access my posts in chronological order with the newest up top, and older as you scroll down.
Review My Work
If you are still on Facebook, just click here to leave a review if you haven’t already. This is another signal to FB that you want to see my posts in your Feed.
Support My Efforts
If you haven’t supported my work financially in a while, I’d be so grateful for your support today. Simply click this link to give any one-time or monthly amount of your choice. Thank you!
Big Gratitude For You
This Community-Focused Western Mass Regional Weather Resource grew organically on my FB page without a plan since 2011.
It just happened, and you’ve helped make it the most meaningful decade-plus of my life.
But as FB evolves, I am evaluating other delivery methods for my reporting to better allow me to get you updated weather info that you need for your life, plans and safety.
This why I’m humbly asking you to expand your knowledge and ability around how to stay in contact with me as we go forward into the future together, because I value our relationship very much.
I’ve dedicated almost 4000 consecutive days of my life to this effort and resource, and I want my work to remain useful and VISIBLE to you.
My best to you and yours, thank you, Dave Hayes