Do you wish your content could get seen more in the Facebook news feed?
Have you ever considered that you are sharing your content the wrong way?
For example, using a text update instead of a Facebook link share?
With recent changes to Facebook text updates, if you run a Facebook Page and want to have more people see your page posts in their news feed, you will want to use a Facebook link share instead.
Why the Facebook link share matters
Everything you share on Facebook on your Facebook Page is only seen by a select group of fans. This is because you are competing against other items in the news feed.
If you want to beat out your competition (or at least make a better showing), you’ll want to use Facebook link shares.
Not only do link shares take up more space in the news feed, which works to your benefit if you have an eye-catching image, but they have the opportunity to help you sell your content better to fans instead of posting a status update without any sort of visual.
Here is an example of a Facebook link share.
Creating a Facebook link share is very easy. I’m actually surprised more people don’t use them. To create a Facebook link share, follow these instructions.
As a Facebook marketer, to be successful, you need an edge over your competitors on Facebook. This way more of your content gets seen in the news feed by fans.
One way to do this was to post Facebook text updates on both Facebook profiles and pages. This was because they were seen more in the news feed.
Facebook even agreed and had this to say about how important text status updates were:
Through testing, we have found that when people see more text status updates on Facebook they write more status updates themselves. In fact, in our initial test when we showed more status updates from friends it led to on average 9 million more status updates written each day. Because of this, we showed people more text status updates in their News Feed.
But when you really stop to think about it, you were not reaching people in the news feed because you were sharing really great content. Instead, you were leveraging a flaw in the news feed algorithm.
And while this seemed like the perfect win-win situation for both Facebook Profiles and Facebook Pages because it allowed your content to reach more people, Facebook took notice and implemented Facebook text update changes for Facebook Pages.
Now before you get mad and cry foul over how Facebook keeps making it difficult for your business to succeed because of all of these changes, consider this.
The constant changes on Facebook are not the issue.
The main issue is the type of content that you share on your page. I’m not saying that all of the content you share is bad, it is just how you are sharing it.
Why it is difficult to increase Facebook engagement
If you are not seeing the levels of engagement on Facebook that you would like, there are a number of reasons why this could be happening.
Sharing low quality content
Your news feed is not a dumping ground. As a way to clean-up the Facebook news feed, Facebook reported they wanted to show more high quality content to users.
To do this, Facebook would penalize low quality content that was being shared.
What is considered low quality content?
Internet memes and status updates that are off topic are considered low quality content.
While these items tend to see higher engagement on Facebook because they are very “shareable.” Facebook doesn’t think so and therefore does not show it to users.
The takeaway here is that you will need to find another source of content to share. If you are a business and have a Facebook Page, I would recommend skipping all of the fluff and instead, share content about your brand and tell your story and what makes your business so great.
Posting when your fans are not online
If you are blindly posting on Facebook, you definitely need to consider a new Facebook strategy.
Think about it. If I am sharing content when the least number of users are not on Facebook, I am only reaching a fraction of my audience.
To increase your engagement, you need to ensure you are posting when people are on Facebook. This way they see your content and can interact with it.
There are plenty of tools you can use to help you figure out what the right posting times are.
For example, if you have a Facebook Page, one way to increase Facebook engagement is to use Facebook Insights and to look at when your fans are online.
Use Facebook Insights to learn when your fans are online so you know the best times to engage with them.
Alternatively, you can also use the excellent Facebook tool, Agorapulse to measure how effective your Facebook content is and to tweak when you are sharing it.
Sharing the wrong type of content
While content is kind, it is important to know what type of content works best for your situation.
Instead of copying someone else’s Facebook strategy, you need to figure out what works best for you.
For example, some Facebook users see increased engagement from photo-sharing. For others who don’t have an audience interested in this type of content, text only status updates work well for them.
The takeaway here is to try different types of content to learn what Facebook users are interested in. Once you identify Facebook trends, keep using them until they no longer deliver the results.
Now that you are aware of some of the ways you can hurt your Facebook engagement, here are some tips to help you increase Facebook engagement.
What types of content can increase Facebook engagement?
Instead of sitting around waiting at your keyboard to search Facebook posts, here is a nifty trick using Google to search through posts from a Facebook Profile or Facebook Page.
Google + Facebook search strategy
I have been using this Google search trick for a while and it is very handy for a number of reasons:
Search competitor Facebook Pages
Search your friends posts
Search posts for people you are not friends with
Save time and quickly locate past posts
To use Google to search Facebook posts, follow these instructions.
With so many users blindly allowing access to their Facebook profile, it is important to know who you give access to your information and what they plan to do with it.
You are very cautious about who you give out your banking information to. It’s time you begin doing the same with your Facebook Profile information.
Learn how to secure your Facebook profile with this collection of Facebook user privacy habits to check.
12 important statistics about Facebook user privacy
Are your Facebook photo albums a mess? Do you wish you could rearrange Facebook albums?
For those of you who plan to get more organized in 2014, a good place to start is with the Facebook photo albums. Not only is it relatively easy to create an album, but this action of getting organized can spillover into your personal life as well.
Here is a handy shortcut to help get your Facebook photo albums more organized on Facebook Profiles and Facebook Pages.
Rearranging Facebook photo albums can be time-consuming. Source: Joyoflife.
Do you know how to rename a Facebook Page when you need to make a change to your Facebook Page name?
Whether you need to rename a Facebook Page because your branding has changed, you’ve spelled your business name wrong, or you just want to change your Facebook Page name, we’re going to teach you how to rename a Facebook Page.
Why rename a Facebook Page?
If you’ve read our list of 3 reasons to rename a Facebook Page, you know how important it is to have your Facebook Marketing strategy in place before you name your Facebook Page.
While it isn’t impossible to rename a Facebook Page, the process can be a little stressful for some business owners because renaming a page requires going through a few steps and providing documentation to Facebook.
By having a Facebook Marketing strategy, you can make the process to rename a Facebook Page easier.
Challenges with renaming a Facebook Page
As we mentioned, some business owners may experience issues when trying to rename a Facebook Page.
For example, you can rename a Facebook Page as many times as you like when you have less than 200 fans; however, once you have more than 200 fans, you have to submit a request to Facebook to rename your Facebook Page.
If you have come to the conclusion that you absolutely need to rename a Facebook Page, we’re going to teach you how to rename your page.
To rename a Facebook Page, follow the instructions below.
Are you concerned that you might not have the right privacy settings marked when posting a status update on Facebook? Learn how to quickly check your Facebook privacy settings using the Facebook view as tool.
While it is very easy to use the Facebook view as tool, for one reason or another, we forget to use it.
By not using it, this can put us into an embarrassing situation if someone we didn’t intend to share our updates with see’s them. For example, if you didn’t intend to share that holiday party photo with your co-workers.
To use the view as tool to see what someone can and cannot view on your Facebook profile, follow these instructions.
Since September, Facebook has been testing an easier way to watch videos. After months of testing and seeing higher levels of engagement in people liking, commenting, and watching videos, they announced a premium ad called Facebook video ads.
What are Facebook video ads?
Example of Facebook video ads in the news feed.
Facebook video ads are a way for advertisers to display video content in a users’ news feed.
When a user is viewing their news feed and a video ad appears, the video will begin to autoplay without sound.
Before you get mad and delete your Facebook account, don’t worry. They’re not that bad.
That’s because in order to play a video with sound, users will need to click on the video to play it with sound.
What they’re not
I am surprised at how many people are already complaining about Facebook video ads. They’re not live, so you really have nothing to compare them to yet.
For those of you trying to figure out what they look like, forget about seeing a Facebook news feed with lots of videos playing at one time.
Facebook knows what they are doing. Video ads will autoplay (without sound).
One additional thing if you want to watch the video ad with sound, users will need to click the ad. If you want to skip the video ad, you can scroll right past them.
Why you don’t need to worry about Facebook video ads
While Facebook is currently testing video ads with select partners like Summit Entertainment, most users won’t need to worry about seeing an abundance of video ads in their news feed.
As I mentioned, they’re a premium feature and because they will cost $2 million per 15 second spot (source), you’ll mostly only see video ads from companies with deep pockets, which means the ads should be pretty good.
This doesn’t mean you should avoid Facebook video ads. They are coming to a news feed near you at some point so get ready.
Facebook has been making a lot of updates to Facebook Pages over the past few months. Not only did they roll out the Facebook reviews button, which let’s fans leave a review about a business, but now they have now rolled out the Facebook Pages follow button.
While the follow button was a feature they were testing for Facebook Pages in October, it’s finally here.
What this means is that instead of liking every Facebook Page, fans and customers have a choice. They can like a page or choose to follow Facebook Pages.
I consider this to be a major announcement because it changes the level to which fans and customers can engage with a Facebook Page.
Changing interactions with Facebook Pages
Previously, the Facebook follow button was a feature only reserved for Facebook Profiles.
This gave people the opportunity to friend people they knew personally and to follow people they didn’t.
For example, most people would send a friend request to a family member and follow a celebrity or public figure. This way they would be able to see updates from both people in their news feed without being friends with everyone.
Now, instead of liking a Facebook Page by becoming a fan and liking their page, you can choose to follow a page instead.
Following vs. Liking a Facebook Page
As I mentioned, this is pretty significant. Here’s why.
Previously, in order to interact with a Facebook Page, you could add them to an interest list or if you wanted to see their updates in your news feed, you had to like their page.
This is great if it’s someone you know and you support their business. But what if you want to see their updates in your news feed, but you don’t really want to endorse them (because that’s what liking a page essentially does). There really was no other option.
With the follow button for Facebook Pages, now you can selectively choose which pages you like and which ones you follow.
In both situations, this solves the problem of seeing their updates in the news feed and it let’s fans and customers be more selective about which pages they endorse to their friends.
