# Skill #8 — Social media content & publishing (2026), owned channels: FB page Great House Farm II, Instagram, YouTube
Written 26 Oct 2026.
## Practitioner testimony
- History niches grow fastest on Facebook with share-worthy, story-led posts and replying to EVERY comment; a publisher network reports 0→40k followers in 2 months for an Ancient Egypt page (with a $3/day boost) and states comment replies multiplied engagement (Ezoic live case study, 2024).
- Newsletter growers report growth when content appears where people already are, each piece pointing to one destination (The Introverted Networker, 2025).
- Our own data: best post so far is the c.1880 armour image (IG 84 views); a reel reached 101 on IG. Image/record posts beat text-only.
## How-to
1. One post per channel per day, built from ONE record fact (assets/facts-10.md) + the matching Cedwyn page (UTM: utm_source=facebook|instagram, utm_medium=social, utm_campaign=bizdev-YYYYMMDD, utm_content=<fact-slug>).
2. Lead with the most striking line; date and source in the post; no banned words; never name the family member who runs it; no accusations.
3. Reply to every comment within the day; pin the best post weekly.
4. Log every post to the project workspace with its URL and UTM.
5. Instagram links are not clickable in captions: say "link in bio" and keep the bio link on /ebooks/ (the project lead sets the bio).

## Update 26 Oct 2026 21:15Z (bizdev cc597974)
- Facebook Page STORIES cannot be published from here: the connected Facebook tools only list stories (FACEBOOK_LIST_PAGE_STORIES); raw Graph calls run as the user, not the Page ('#200 must be posted as the page itself'), and we do not pull Page tokens. Stories are an in-app job (the project lead): use a 1080x1920 card + link sticker. Card ready: files/promo/story-ebooks-free-20261027.jpg.
- Repurpose before you render: the 26-episode Lost Farms series ran on FB (and 2 on YouTube) but never on Instagram. Old end cards carry the retired ebooks.* address: cover y=500-700 from the card's first frame and fade the Cedwyn address in (see files/promo/r-lost-farms-ep7-1916.mp4).
- Hosting any image/PDF for a post: tools/host_r2.py (correct Content-Type; ig_post.py upload() hardcodes video/mp4).
- 2026 practitioner consensus (Instagram 2026 round-ups, e.g. prodshort.com Reels best practices): hook in the first second, burned-in captions, one idea per reel, consistent series beat one-offs. Our own number to beat: IG reel best 101 views.


## Refresh 29 Oct 2026 (BIZDEV run 5): organic reach numbers (#8 9)
- Socialinsider reach benchmarks (Aug 2026 data, updated 21 Oct 2026, read in full): Instagram reach rate 3.20% of followers (down 14% YoY), Facebook 1.25%. Instagram by format: carousels 4.50%, Reels 4.10%, images 4.00%. Facebook: images 1.20%, albums 1.15%. socialinsider.io
- Socialinsider Facebook benchmarks (25 M posts, 130 K pages; Q3 2026 update): average engagement 0.15%, flat YoY; Reels kept the top engagement spot through Q3 2026; albums win for smaller pages; image posts fell to 0.08% in Q3. socialinsider.io
### Apply to Cedwyn (FB page 1 follower, IG 6 on 29 Oct)
- Follower reach rates are meaningless at our size: almost all reach has to come from non-followers, which on both platforms means Reels/recommendations. Keep video as the default on FB.
- On Instagram test carousels against reels: the weekly quote pack (3 cards + cover) is already a carousel; compare its reach with the reel median after 48 h.
- On FB, when posting a still, post an album of 3-4 record images (best format for small pages) rather than one image.

## Our numbers, 29 Oct 2026 18:30Z (BIZDEV run 5, read via the APIs)
- Instagram reach per post (8 latest): 0-6 for every post since 27 Oct except the OS-maps reel of 27 Oct 09:14 (reach 36, 42 views); the 27 Oct carousel reach 2. Zero shares and saves on all 8.
- Facebook (page Great House Farm II): post_total_media_view_unique = 0 on all 8 latest posts (28-29 Oct reels and the 29 Oct blog post). With 1 follower the page gets no distribution; posting volume there is not moving anything.
- Comments from outside accounts in the last 48 h: none on FB, IG or YouTube (every comment is our own first-comment link).
- Lesson: hold FB page posting to the cap's minimum (1/day) and put the saved effort into YouTube wide-hook Shorts (the only channel with 3-figure views: 205 and 172) and list-building; revisit when the FB page has 50+ followers.