A new way to follow Down the Road

Some of you keep up with Down the Road through my personal Facebook profile. It’s public; anyone can follow it. You can follow it too, if you care; click here and click Follow. (I accept friend requests only from people I know personally, though.)

Unfortunately, starting Wednesday Facebook will block automatic publishing from outside platforms (like this blog) to personal profiles. That’s how I’ve been sending my blog posts to Facebook all along. I’d never get it done if I had to do it manually.

Blogs can still auto-publish to Facebook pages, however. So I created one for Down the Road. If you’d like to keep up with my posts on Facebook, click here or on the image below, and then when the page opens click the Like button.

DTR_FB_Page

So if you really want to follow me on Facebook, you need to like my new page. So click here and then click Like.

Or say to hell with Facebook and get Down the Road in your email every morning instead. You’ll never miss a post that way — if you follow me on Facebook, their algorithms probably keep you from seeing every post. Click below to get started. I’ll never spam you or give your email address to anyone.

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Here are some other ways you can follow Down the Road:

Feedly — I use and recommend Feedly for following blogs. If you’re already a Feedly user, or want to try Feedly, just click this button to add Down the Road!

follow us in feedly

Twitter — I share new blog posts, and other updates, on Twitter. Just click the button below to follow me there, where I go by “mobilene.” (That’s a nickname my dad used to call me, and it’s never taken anywhere as a username.) Click here to go to my Twitter profile and click Follow to follow me there.

RSS — If you use some other service to follow blogs, try giving it either this blog’s URL (blog.jimgrey.net) or its feed URL (blog.jimgrey.net/feed).


Comments

9 responses to “A new way to follow Down the Road”

  1. mike Avatar

    Thanks for sharing these ideas about connecting with your blog. I’ll try to look closer at these possibilities to better understand them. It is interesting that there has been such a proliferation of ways to make connections as well as opportunities for self-publishing. At the same time it seems to me that the expansion of choices has worked in some ways to decrease the possibilities for creating and supporting communities of interest. I think it is likely that I am just too out of touch with it all to really understand what is out there and where it is going.

    1. Jim Grey Avatar

      I blog primarily to be in community with other people who share my interests and related interests. I’ve searched the Web for others with these interests and commented on their platforms, primarily blogs. And others have done the same and found me. It is a slow-growth way to do it, but I think it still works. Those of us interested in esoteric things will put in the effort, for the drive to find community remains strong.

      But in this post-blog era, the Web drives publishers toward being on multiple platforms to build an audience. Right now podcasts and vlogs is where the audience growth is happening. And you have to tie into social media, and probably even pay to get greater reach. You probably still want a blog as a place to send listeners/viewers for more information. It’s a comprehensive media strategy.

      I have always harbored a fantasy of being a very popular blogger. I suppose it’s the same kind of fantasy that keep people buying lottery tickets. Except that there is a path to that popularity. It involves writing about banal topics and sharing banal photos, and being a personality in social media. It’s a huge amount of work that I don’t have time for. And I’d feel like I sold my soul.

  2. Dan James Avatar

    Jim, I thought you were moving away from Facebook? I can see the benefits of having a page for a blog, and then keeping your own personal profile more private and for family and friends you actually know with in the offline world and want to stay connected with.

    Over here in the UK Facebook seem to have launched a pretty intensive TV and billboard ad campaign to convince us they want to “get back to what made Facebook good in the first place” and don’t promote fake ads, personal data misuse etc. Or, as one site described it, “Facebook have made an ad about how bad Facebook has become”!

    Personally I think too many people have already lost faith to turn it around now. I’ll be sticking to following you via email!

    1. Jim Grey Avatar

      My personal use of Facebook has dropped by probably 80% since removing it from my phone. I still check in a couple times a day as there are people I’d never be in touch with otherwise.

      I can’t ignore that a small but steady portion, probably 20%, of my pageviews come from Facebook, and most of those via my posts being shared there the day they go live. I know a handful of people for whom Facebook is the only way they see my blog. So I created the page. With my nostrils pinched shut.

      1. Dan James Avatar

        It will be interesting to see how many people resubscribe via the new Facebook page. If only a small proportion do, it will of course impact the total views you get from Facebook so might make it even less useful in the future. Will also be interesting to see if/how commenting changes on Facebook. I have no idea if people click through to your main blog and comment or you can comment direct in Facebook too, and how that breaks down for you currently.

        1. Jim Grey Avatar

          It’s uneven. Some people who read my blog via Facebook comment only there.

          I think that the likely outcome is that my volume of new-post pageviews will drop off now. Two reasons: people who didn’t really deliberately follow my blog but were my Facebook friends will not casually interact with my posts, and Facebook Page posts get buried unless the Page owner is willing to pay to boost them. I’m not.

          If this goes badly enough I’ll close the Page down and instruct everyone to just sign up for my blog via email.

          1. Dan James Avatar

            My hunch is it’ll go that last way. Over the years with different blogs and communities and stuff I’ve done, when I’ve done a reboot of some kind you find the true faithful readers who stick around. I’d always rather have those than dozens/hundreds who subscribed years ago but never read anything anymore.

            1. Jim Grey Avatar

              Well, at the moment, over the last year Facebook ranked third in number of pageviews generated by outside platforms. First was search, and second was the WordPress Reader. Facebook sent me 6,000 pageviews in the last year!

  3. Sam Avatar

    Cool thanks for this!

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

%d bloggers like this: