Over the past few weeks, you may have noticed that The Newton County Appeal’s presence on Facebook is not as strong as it once was.
That is because of a strange but not uncommon occurrence that’s been happening as Meta rolls out the new versions of pages across its platform.
So here’s what happened. About three weeks ago, our page went through an apparent upgrade. And after the upgrade was complete, the page just completely disappeared. It’s not just unpublished, but if you typed in our old address on Facebook, it’s not even there.
After talking with our buddy Brandon Grisham with Emmerich Newspapers, we’ve determined that the problem is on Facebook’s end, and not our end. However, that’s not a good thing when you’re a small business like us trying to compete for Facebook’s attention when there are pages with millions of followers.
Our company has tried to submit ticket after ticket, but they get closed with no resolution. It seems like Facebook doesn’t want to fix the issue. Thus, we started a new page, but instead of having nearly 10,000 likes, we have about 250 right now.
So if you were trying to keep up with us on Facebook, you need to go back and like and follow our page again. Also, encourage your friends to go follow us there as well.
But if you really want to make sure you don’t miss out on anything in the paper or on our website, I’d encourage you to do a few things.
First, I’d encourage you to sign up for our email newsletters. You can subscribe for four different emails. You can get our weekday “Today’s Headline” email that will give you a look at what we’ve posted each weekday. Our obituary email runs the morning after we receive a new obituary. The weekly most read is exactly that. Each Sunday, you can see what’s been the most popular stories. Then our E-Edition email runs on Thursday.
Second, follow us on Twitter and Instagram (both at @NCAppeal), and we will post updates to those accounts.
And of course, subscribe. A subscription is only $30 a year for a print copy in Newton and Neshoba counties along with Lake and Sebastopol. If you live outside the county, you can get it mailed to you each week for $40 or subscribe digitally for $30 a year. Or stop by your closest newsstand and pick up a copy for $1.
We appreciate your patience and assistance with helping us rebuild our social media audience. If you have questions, please call us at 601-774-9433.
Contact Brent at bmaze@-newtoncountyappeal.com.
