Photo by Zach Klein (flickr cc)

I didn't plan on posting today, but I wanted to do a quick PSA about something I found out today. So on occasion I've had a friend or two say they couldn't reach my Facebook author page. I tried to send a few different versions of links to those people, but no matter what I tried, they couldn't get to it. Even if they searched for me, my name didn't come up.

Then yesterday I did a post on Facebook vs. Twitter: Where The Readers Are and I had more people have the same issue. So I put a call out on Twitter this morning to see who could access the link and who couldn't. Well, turns out, it was blocking anyone from outside the U.S. Uh-oh.

So I did some research and discovered that Facebook apparently has a setting that defaults to only allowing people in your home country to view your page. It blocks EVERYONE else. !!! I was shocked to find this out. I've had this page for at least two years and had no idea. I always wondered why my FB page grew so much more slowly than Twitter. I figured it's because I'm on Twitter more. But now I realize I was unintentionally locking out a whole lot of people. *sigh*

Therefore, I wanted to let everyone know about this setting so that you can check your own page and fix it if you're set on the same default.

To fix this, go to your Facebook PAGE (This is not for profiles but for fan pages.) Click on the Admin Panel, then Manage Permissions. Then make sure there are no countries listed in your "Countries Restrictions" box. And select the button that says "Hide this page from viewers in this country." If you have no countries selected then that will mean it's open to all.

If you need more visual directions, here's another blog post with pics.

Grr. Kind of frustrating that I'm just figuring this out now, but hopefully you can save yourself the trouble.

And for anyone out there who has tried to access my page and had issues, everything should be fixed now. You can follow me here. : )

Am I the only one who wasn't aware of this?