I feel like I’m missing something. What you’re describing is as simple as deleting (or de-activating) one panel and stretching the other. Like this.

Longtime members of Webcomics.com will recall a post from 2014 that explained how buying ads on Facebook could actually harm your ability to reach fans. Now, since that post, I’m told that Facebook has taken steps to correct this — and I can neither confirm nor deny that.

But one thing that it made clear to me is the importance of organic reach. Organic reach is the description of how your social-media post moves through the system without the help of advertising. And — in the best-case scenario — your organic reach is powered by actual, living people who clicked “Like” on your Facebook Fan Page (as opposed to click-farm worked who clicked it because it was their job to do so).

Now, I’m expressively NOT going to comment on Colleen’s Facebook activity because I know nothing about it. But here’s what I do know. She’s got an immense number of Likes on her FB page — over 6,000. And her post seems to indicate that she’s had experience with purchasing Facebook advertising.

To me, that would make me worry that perhaps she did purchase FB advertising for her Page at some point, and that her organic reach is being damaged by a number of clickfarm Likes.

Here’s what I do know. A quick scroll through my own Facebook Fan Page tells me that a typical post, for me, reaches about 200 people. That’s around 20% of the 922 Likes the Page has earned over the years. And I’ve never bought FB advertising — I know that’s all pure organic reach.

If someone reaches only 27 people through a FB page with 6800 Likes, that’s about .003%

Again… I can’t comment on what Colleen’s social-media approach has been, because I know nothing about it.

What I do know is that my own approach — the strategy that I have been consistently advocating here for years and years — has given me very different results.

——

NOW…

Let’s take an even bigger misconception about Facebook that we’re presented with:

FB will deliberately prevent your fans from seeing your posts in their feed even though those fans signed up to your page to talk to you

The first part of that sentence is technically true. But prevent is a strong word. Facebook has become popular through knowing how to give users what they want. And, you have to come to grips with that fact that someone who Likes your FB Page does NOT want to get every last post you make after that. They just don’t.

And I think the second part of it is questionable (at best). For very similar reasons…

You cannot assume that all of the people who clicked Like on your Facebook page have done so because they want this to be the channel through which you communicate.

They clicked Like because they’re interested. No more. No less.

And the more they Like the subsequent posts you make, they more they’ll see future posts.

But — speaking in general terms — most of them absolutely DO NOT want to see every post you make after they click Like.

In fact, I’m pretty sure they’d get tired of that within the first week, and do whatever it took to unsubscribe from your posts.

And if you’re expecting anything near 100% penetration out of social media, I think you’ve got it a little skewed.

——-

So, it would seem that a newsletter is the answer, right?

Make no mistake, I think a newsletter is excellent outreach. It IN NO WAY should take the place of social-media outreach in your promotion strategy, however. Rather, it’s an excellent tool to use ALONGSIDE your social-media activities.

And if you need proof, launch a newsletter yourself, and be sure to use a delivery system that gives you analytics — specifically, you’ll want a report on how many of your e-mails are actually opened by the recipients.

And be prepared to be depressed.

In my own experience, the 20% Facebook reach was far better than my opening-percentage for e-mail newsletters… and those e-mails provided zero opportunities for viral message-spreading. Each e-mail was a dead-end for my message… whether it was opened or unopened.

Every social-media post goes to people who know me — and has potential to be spread to people who don’t know me. And that’s where all the power lies.

——

So, ol’ Brad’s got a big ol’ love for Facebook.

Nope.

This is sheer pragmatism.

My opinion on Facebook — and all social media — remains the same as it ever was.

It can be inefficient — and at times downright ineffective. It’s maddening, and it’s really difficult to get positive results sometimes.

But it’s the only game in town.

That’s where all of your readers are. That’s where all of your prospective readers are.

Your ability to apply a smart social-media strategy — and to understand things like organic reach — are going to be very useful in growing your webcomics business.

Not because social media is super-efficient for creators

But because it’s super popular with the readers.

WordPress has a Gallery. When you click Insert Media, look at the resulting dialog box and you’ll see it at the top of the left-hand column. You can create a gallery with several variables — or you can build a slideshow.

I use 150 dpi to accommodate higher-end screens.

Here are some more resources:

Using Calibre to create multiple digital-download files

ePub Guide

MOBI guide

Adding a cover image to a PDF

Have you reached out to Philip Hofer? This seems like something he’d excel at.

I’m not familiar with the Webcomics plug-in. I wrote about the SEO impact of using a similar function on Comic Easel a while back. And the upshot there was that the transcript wasn’t scanned by search engines, and therefore, it had no real SEO benefit.

Now, the idea of adding the transcript to the comic’s page has a pretty obvious benefit. See, that’s the major drawback to webcomics from an SEO perspective, even if you generate daily, original content, it’s invisible to search engines because an image can’t be spidered.

I’ve heard of some cartoonists who try to get around this by adding the transcript on their page. That adds searchable words to the page that relate directly to that specific comic. But if you’re trying to get searchable type on your page to increase your value to a search engine, I think you could do better.

In my opinion, you should be using that blog for what it’s for — reader outreach. I was a huge believer in this when my site ran on ads. And now that I’m putting most of my energy behind Patreon, I use it to promote my exclusive content.

In other words, I wouldn’t put a lot of effort to transcribing all of those old comics. I think the overall effect would be pretty small. If you want to start doing so with new updates, you could, but, again, I think it’s going to be a small difference. But… using that blog for reader outreach? That puts searchable text on your page — AND it’s doing a much more important job to boot.

I know next-to-nothing about DeviantArt, but I’m gonna take a wild guess that these people — like many creative people in general — are just plain-old bad at promotion.