Remington BeggDo you feel like you get punched in the throat every time you look at your company’s Facebook analytics? It’s a common feeling among businesses trying to make a splash with social media.
There’s nothing more frustrating than sharing your awesome blog link, product promos and team photos, just to see your content reach a tiny fraction of the people who like your page. A lot people clicked “Like” on your page, so why shouldn’t they see all of your content? You have Facebook and their News Feed algorithm to thank for that.
With the amount of content that is published on Facebook, it has become impossible to show people all the posts from all the friends, family and pages they follow. It would be like drinking from a firehose!
So although I see Facebook’s reason for this, I am not a fan of only seeing what they deem relevant for me to see. I like control. I can’t stand when the default News Feed setting “Top Stories” shows me posts from 2 or 3 days ago just because they have a lot of engagement. I would rather see information in chronological order.
Facebook does give you the ability to see most recent posts. See the image below to see how to do that. But everytime you close your browser tab or refresh Facebook, the News Feed will default back to Top Stories. Not really the best user experience in my opinion.
So now that you know a little about how the Facebook News Feed algorithm works, let’s find out how to get your content in front of more people and have them click on the things you want them to click on. This is the special sauce and how you can outperform your competitors!
How to Conquer the Facebook Algorithm
Facebook is an incredibly powerful tool for your business. It gives you the opportunity to hyper target and get your message in front of the right people at the right time. But it takes a little strategy and even budget at times to conquer the News Feed and grow your post reach and engagement.
Organic Reach
Organic reach audiences are the people that saw a non-boosted or advertised Facebook post. Facebook’s News Feed algorithm determines how many people see your post. It is the gatekeeper, and it’s your job to master it.
How do you master it? Ahhh, that’s the big question.
The Facebook News Feed algorithm is always changing and adapting to what Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook CEO) and Facebook decide is best for it users (and best for Facebook.
In January 2018, Zuckerberg announced that Facebook would be changing it’s News Feed algorithm to favor content and media produced by friends and family, devaluing content from businesses even more. This most recent change makes it even more important to learn how to give the algorithm what it wants, and how to give your content the reach you desperately want.
Facebook wants nothing more than to connect people to people. They want people to stay on Facebook longer and get value out of their experience. They are very much into making their 2 billion users happy. Overloading those users with business ads is not the path to user happiness.
As a business owner or marketer, this makes the job of getting that precious organic reach more difficult. But if you give Facebook users what they want and do it in a creative way, Facebook will reward your brand with more and more organic reach.
As an Inbound Marketer for Impulse Creative, it’s my job to get my clients the most reach possible while driving leads. I have a few ways strategies to do this. I’ll give you some of those strategies, but not all of them. If you want that special sauce, you need to schedule a time to talk with us!
Strategy 1: The 80/20 Rule
I like to use the 80/20 Rule when scheduling out social media posts. Try to make 80% of your posts engagement style posts, then make the other 20% link posts.
An engagement post can be a lot of things. One thing it is not, is a post with a link that takes people away from Facebook and back to your website. Engagement posts can be any of the following:
- Team photos
- Live video trying to solve problems for your target market
- Creative meme photos
- Question posts
- Polls and surveys
- Giveaways and contests
The goal of these posts is to drive Likes, Comments and Shares. The Facebook algorithm sees posts that get a lot of engagement like this as interesting content,so they will expand the organic reach of the post.
Think of the Likes, Comments, and Shares as a point system. Likes get 1 point. Comments get 7 points. Shares get 15 points. The more points your post racks up, the more people it will reach.
The 20% part of the equation should still focus on valuable content, but it should also contain a way from people to get back to your site or convert to a lead. Ideas for your more lead gen posts might be:
- Blog links
- Testimonials
- Fun product videos with tagged products
- Ebook giveaways - Driving them to free offers they will convert on
Paid Facebook Reach
In a lot of ways Facebook has become a pay-to-play type of game for businesses. Back in 2011 or so, a business on Facebook could publish a post and it would reach a large portion of the people that Like your page. It was a fantastic time!
Today, Facebook throttles down posts by business and makes it nearly impossible to reach a large portion of your followers. If you want post reach immediately, then boosting them is a good way to go. Facebook also makes it extremely easy to do that with the convenient “Boost” button on the bottom right of your posts.
While it’s easy to boost a post and it’s refreshing to see all the reach and engagement that can come from a boosted post, it’s important to boost with a strategy. If you don’t, it’s really easy to waste money quickly.
If using paid Facebook posts is part of your marketing plan, you need to make sure that you get results that give you a return on investment. This means that it’s probably a better idea to boost a post that is connected to a type of offer or lead generation tool. You’ll then be able to track how many leads and customers that boosted post is responsible for.
Facebook is a platform that more than 2 BILLION people now use month. Mind blowing, I know. With a user base like this, it’s nearly guaranteed that your target audience is on Facebook and can be reached through the right targeting. Getting that target audience to follow your page is a great way to connect and marketing to them, but getting your posts to show up in their News Feeds is and will continue to be a challenge for businesses.
Just remember to post value and do it in a creative way that get people to Like, Comment and Share those posts. If you do this well and consistently, you’ll be on your way to beating and mastering the Facebook News Feed Algorithm.
If you would like to learn more social media marketing goodness from our team of experts, click the image button below to explore how social media can work and be profitable for you.
