Second catch up

by Raven

Here’s more of what has been posted on Facebook over the past few weeks. For once, I’m going to take these a bit out of order, instead grouping them by subject.

First, Glomus Commune (and it’s business, East Brook Community Farm) have been posting more on the internet and I’ve been passing it through Commune Life. One thing that they posted was about going to the Franklin Farmer’s Market and what they were selling.

Here’s what I wrote about that post: “East Brook Community Farm, Glomus Commune’s main business, was recently at the Franklin (NY) Farmer’s Market offering all this good stuff.”

This did fairly well on Facebook:

Glomus has also been posting pictures of their buildings on their East Brook Community Farm Facebook page and I have been posting them to Facebook. Here’s what I wrote about their post about one of their buildings: “The building at Glomus Commune called Skyfish looks very plain from the front but it’s very colorful from the back–some folks have said it has a ‘mullet’: business in the front, party in the back…” What was on the East Brook site was: “Folks who come for potlucks, farm tours, and sap boils get to see our Skyfish building with its bright bright back wall! What a joy to see it in the winter!” Here’s a picture of the back of the building:

This did very well:

The Magnolia Collective is doing a bunch of construction on their house and getting help from the other communities. I put a couple of posts about this up on Commune Life. Here’s the first. I said, “Yet more communal cooperation as the Magnolia Collective gets construction help from Twin Oaks and Living Energy Farm.” What the Magnolia Collective wrote was: “Thank you to Nina from @twinoakscommunity for coming to do construction on the foyer at magnolia! We got our first drywall piece installed today! As well as figured how to use a drywall Jack together. To be honest, the house has been a work in progress for quite some time, but we are excited by the near completion of this shed (thanks @livingenergyfarm !) and the beginning of this foyer project!” Here’s the picture they posted:

This also did very well:

More recently, they put up another post which I reposted, saying: “The work continues on the Magnolia Collective’s house. Here’s the latest:” What Magnolia wrote was: “Here is Chenchira feeling so devilishly proud of her and Nina’s work on the ceiling. Goodbye, mold! Hello, fresh insulation and drywall!” And here’s the pic they posted:

Again, this did very well:

The hammock business at Twin Oaks has their own Facebook page and recently had a lovely picture that I reposted, saying: “One of Twin Oaks Community’s main businesses is making hammocks. Here’s a picture of two Oakers working together to weave a rainbow hammock.” They said: “Here’s another peek inside the Hammock shop! Check out the finished product on our website ” And the Oakers and hammock:

This was yet another post that did very well:

Having been at Acorn, I took a bunch of pictures to publish. As I was leaving I took photos of all the buildings and recently put them up, saying: “For a somewhat small community, Acorn has a lot of buildings. Pictured: Heartwood, the Pole Barn (in the distance), the Tiny House, the Farmhouse, the Seed Palace, the Rec Collective, the Smoke Shack, and the New Steel Building.”

Surprisingly (to me, at least) for just a bunch of pictures of buildings, this did very, very well on Facebook:

Finally, I’ve been putting up a bunch of what I think of as ‘provocative’ questions up on Facebook. I put two different ones up about the pandemic and they did dismally. (I guess Facebook is tired of the pandemic and doesn’t like showing pandemic related things to folks.) On the other hand, when I posted this deliberately provocative question, it got a lot of views and a lot of responses:

Here’s how well it did:

And here are some of the comments (and to my surprise, some people really had fun with this):

My response, and one more:

What does equality mean to you?

by Raven Glomus

I was trying to think of a Facebook question and I realized, in spite of constantly talking about egalitarian communities, I hadn’t asked what other folks definitions of equality (or egalitarian or equity) was. So I posted this:

After I posted it, I realized that I had reposted a piece from the blog here on Facebook, just a little over a week before, where I directly asked the question, What’s Egalitarian?

Still, I was interested in what other folks thought the words meant. (Also, this is Facebook–people seldom remember what you posted the week before.) It did get a good reach–as you can see, 225 people saw it. Unfortunately, there were only three comments, and one of them was from me. Here’s the comments:

Please feel free to comment if you read this. I really am interested in knowing what different people mean by equality. (And I was surprised that no one got into the ‘equality vs equity’ debate.)

It’s Fall

by Raven Glomus

I post everyday on Facebook and three times a week on this blog.  One of the ways I am able to do that is that both Facebook and WordPress have scheduling features that allow me to schedule posts well in advance.  I was looking at my scheduled posts for Facebook this past weekend and suddenly noticed that I had the same exact starting wording three days in a row.  As you will see below, they all began with  “It’s fall and…”

Apparently, the seasonal change has gotten to me.  I could have changed several of them (as I said, these were scheduled well in advance) but it sort of amused me and I was curious to see if anyone on Facebook noticed.  If anyone did, no one said anything, but given that most people see these posts on their feed along with dozens of other posts from dozens of other sources, it’s quite possible that no one noticed.

Other than that, as you will see, these posts did quite well, although they didn’t really attract a lot of comments.

The first was a picture post on fall flowers around Glomus Commune. I double posted it on Facebook and Instagram and it reached 561 people on Instagram and 280 folks on FB.  (Instagram posts usually reach a lot more people than FB posts so this isn’t really surprising.) It got five comments, but they were all from Rejoice–with pictures of fall flowers from Acorn.

Here’s what Rejoice sent us:

For the next day, I was hunting for material when I went to the SESE website and saw this useful looking checklist for gardeners.  Because these are pictures of the Facebook feed, the link there won’t work.  Here’s a working link to the original article: https://blog.southernexposure.com/…/garden-checklist…/

This was what went up on our Facebook feed (beginning, of course, with “It’s fall and…”):

No comments, but it reached more than two hundred people.

Finally, I was trying to think up a question for our Monday post.  What I came up with was this:

It reached over 150 folks, which isn’t bad, but I write these questions to solicit comments and I only got three–and one of them was from me and, honestly, L Elizabeth Storm is my cousin and probably just saw this on her Facebook feed because we are related.

Anyway, it’s fall…

Climate Change and Communities

by Raven Glomus

Back in July, I asked a question on Facebook, about how communities and folks reading it were responding to climate change:

As you can see, a lot of people were reached and there were a bunch of comments:

Here are some of the comments:

And, of course, someone had to come up with the techno solution:

Since these are photos, here is a live link in case anyone wants to see it:

 https://corporate.exxonmobil.com/…/Carbon-capture-and…

Creativity in Community

by Raven Glomus

I am still trying to understand Facebook. I don’t like it but I realize that I can reach more folks that way. I pointed out a couple of weeks ago that I put out what I thought was a decent, interesting question and, although it got an okay number of view, it didn’t didn’t get any comments. Another post got a couple of vague comments but not very many views.

I posted what I thought was a more generic question and, for a couple of days, it didn’t get many views (I think less than fifty) and no comments and I thought that was that. Maybe my FB questions had run out of steam.

Then a couple of folks wrote nice, on topic and astute comments, and I replied, and I even got a thank you from Zamin (who is a regular commenter) and we were off. As of Thursday (as I’m writing this) we have a bit over a hundred views, which isn’t spectacular but isn’t bad either, and is at least double what I thought we were getting. I’m still trying to understand Facebook.

Here’s the post and the comments:

Healthy Communities and Community Memes

by Raven Glomus

I am tending to use Friday posts on here to summarize or showcase posts from the Facebook site. This past week has not been a good week for that.

I recently wrote what I thought was a good question on the site and it got an okay number of views, but no one commented on it. What good is writing an interesting question if no one responds to it?

Here’s what I wrote:

I also reposted a provocative meme from the Twin Oaks website and it didn’t get very many views. It did get two comments but neither felt particularly on topic to me.

Here’s the couple of comments:

I don’t know. Maybe folks are getting bored with the content. Or, perhaps more likely, it’s spring and everyone is just too busy to respond. Let’s see what happens from here.

This Summer

by Raven Glomus

It’s been a long and difficult winter. The pandemic has made it worse. I’m sure that it’s been better for those of us that live in community, but it’s been hard for us also. Now we are being told that the worst of the pandemic may be over by summer. By summer the weather will be warmer and there will be a lot more things to do.

I am always trying to think up questions to post on Facebook. We probably get a better response to the questions that I post than to anything else I put up on the Commune Life Facebook page. Although the question I posed recently did not say anything about communes or community, I figured by this time we have gathered a community related audience and they would respond appropriately. So I just asked:

As you can see, we reached 210 people and got five comments. I figured some would have nothing to do with community and other comments would. And, so it was. (Although, I put in my own answer which biased it a little in the direction of community responses.)

What are you looking forward to this summer?

The Downside to Communal Living

by Raven Glomus

As I was thinking of what questions I could ask on Facebook, I thought of this: “What is the thing that you like least about communal living?” It seemed to have touched a nerve–we reached 400 people and got twelve comments. Here’s the post:

And here are all the comments. Apparently people are very clear about what they don’t like (well, except for Dan, who can’t remember):

Feel free to add to the list.

Income Sharing: Enticements and Fears

by Raven Glomus

I am still learning about Facebook. I put two very similar posts on Facebook, two days in a row and I think that I got punished for it. The first post got an lot of views and quite a few comments. The second, similar post got few views, no comments, and no likes (or even dislikes). Compare 401 people reached vs 86 people reached. (I’ve had seen lower–we’ve had posts that only got sixty-something views, but 86 is fairly low for us and 401 is fairly high.) I also thought that the comments to the first post were pretty good and I am including most of them.

Here’s my original post:

Quite the interesting selection of responses and I was very happy with it. Compare that with what happened the next day:

Similar question, but it sank like a stone. Oh, well, I guess I learned something. I won’t put two posts that are that similar two days in a row.

And I am glad to have heard so many different feelings about income sharing from the first post.

Mysterious Popularity

by Raven Glomus

Okay, here’s a mystery. I’ve been posting on Facebook daily for over a year. Part of what we try to do is to reach as many people as we can. I’ve had posts where we had less than 70 people reached and posts where I was able to reach over 500. When I posted about Ira at Acorn winning an award, we got well over a thousand views–but Ira is amazing anyway.

Recently I was desperate for a Facebook post and thought of a question to ask. It was a decent question but not particularly interesting–I was really more interested in comments that I was expecting than the question itself. By early the next morning we had gotten a couple of comments–but for some reason, over 600 views. By now it’s gone up to six comments (one of which was from me), which really isn’t a lot of comments, but for some bizarre reason, it now has over six thousand views! I didn’t think that the question was worth it and it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the comments, so I am frankly mystified. I really don’t understand Facebook anyway, but this really makes me feel like it doesn’t make any sense.

I will share the post and comments with you. Maybe someone out there understands better how Facebook works.

Here’s the original post. Note the numbers of People Reached and Engagements, vs Likes and Comments and Shares.

The comments were interesting and here they are below. It’s just that I don’t think that they are 65 hundred views interesting.