Editorial offices on social networks constantly encounter various difficulties, some of which just fall on people’s heads like snow, because the platforms are constantly making new reforms. Reform is often not necessarily good news for the media. 

I decided to go over some of the main complications that the media is currently facing. Naturally, the majority of problems are on Facebook, as it continues to be the primary source of traffic for newsrooms. 

Shadow banning 

This, of course, is nothing new. But it is spreading more and more. This means that the social network does not send any notifications and does not warn the user in any way that the platform has a problem with them. But the reach of their posts are drastically reduced. 

Posts can lose 30-70 percent of their audience without any warning. The situation can get worse, to the point that only page admins can see the posts. 

What can cause shadow banning? Mainly due to several violations, the accumulation of which can lead to a drop in reach. Alternatively, there are possible cases when the editorial office shares every pointless news in fifty-sixty groups, where no one likes or comments on them. 

How can one get out of this situation? 

By reducing the number of materials, and posting only high-quality, readable, comment-able content. Usually, editors, becoming afraid of the situation, start doing the opposite: they start to spread their wings even more, flooding Facebook with pointless materials, and making the problem worse. 

Usually, the shadow ban goes away within a few days or weeks. Patience, common sense and quality content are the best pills in this and all other cases. 

Facebook has changed, everything is mixed up 

Of course, this is an endless process, Facebook is always changing and mixing things up. But now there is a specific confusion that can disturb editorial offices: the social network changes the ties between accounts and pages. 

In fact, pages have now become separate profiles, like personal accounts, and performing actions on the page requires the admin to constantly switch from their personal account to their page account and vice versa. 

This is something that is pointless to fight against because this is how the social network has changed, and we have to accept those changes. 

The best way to solve this issue is to follow the suggestion to switch to the Meta Business Suite application and manage pages from there. Moreover, you can find a very large additional toolkit there. 

Of course, most of the editorial offices are already up-to-date on this new situation, however, the other part is constantly surprised at why something isn’t how it used to be. 

In fact, it’s all about learning new tools quickly. 

Telegram is not working well 

This is a common problem. On the one hand, Telegram is quite active in Armenia, its activity is growing. And it is obvious that for the media this can become a good alternative to having traffic only from Facebook. But here and there, many people fill Telegram with materials that no one reads. Thereby doing pointless work. 

But the issue is that Telegram requires a different logic. Here, the audience should be treated more delicately. 

If you open a channel and fill it with only links, people will stop clicking on them in a matter of days. The content here should not be a cloned version of Facebook. Text media content is required, and only after several posts with such content, a new link. 

Of course, this is a simplified representation of how to work in Telegram. But you should definitely avoid mechanically filling the channel with links. 

In any case, we come back to the old and tested idea: each social network requires content suitable for its type and style. And even the same social network implies a review of the quality and quantity of content over the years. 

Because everything flows and changes, as an old essayist said. 

Samvel Martirosyan 

The views expressed in the column are those of the author's and do not necessarily reflect the views of Media.am.