LETTER TO FACEBOOK: I am writing this letter in response to the exceptionally large drop in reach of our posts recently. Less than 1% of our current posts are reaching our friends. I’ve read all about your reasons for limiting posts that look like advertising, but unfortunately this is the mainstay of our existence. We are a small community of less than 7 000 people living in the outback of South Africa. For more than a year now we have used Facebook to let people know what is happening in our town. We have been promoting the use of Facebook wherever we can and now have more than 3 700 friends. 98% of them use their smartphones on a pre-paid basis and can’t afford to “surf” the web. We do our best to keep them informed of special deals and the latest product offerings. Our pages represent 90% of the local businesses and is the only way people get to know about what is happening in our stores. Furthermore, 96% of our people speak the local dialect called Afrikaans, which we use almost exclusively in our adds. The quality of our site speaks for itself: www.facebook.com/ladismith.advertiser.
Please let me know if there is anything you can do to help us. Dr Adriaan S van den Berg, Site Administrator.
