Last week Facebook, once again, updated their algorithms which decide who and how many people get to see the posts on your Facebook business page.
There are two main changes, the first is what Facebook refer to as “click-baiting”, the posts that give you a taster or a hint at what they story is about, but tell you that you need to click through if you want to know the full story. Now, it could be argued that the title we have used for this blog post “Want more people to see your Facebook posts? Then you need to know this!” is a form of click-baiting, and you would probably be right. However, Facebook also measures how long a visitor stays on the page reading the linked article, if they return to Facebook quickly, the link is deemed less valuable, but if they stay for a while then there is obviously something of interest and Facebook will deem it valuable content to its users. Hopefully, if you are still reading at this point we are giving you valuable information.
So, if you add a link to a story, make sure it leads to useful and interesting content, otherwise Facebook will label you as a “click-baiter” and less people will get to see your stories.
As you can see with this example from Psychology Today, the number of likes, shares and comments show that it is a very useful piece of content so Facebook will promote it to more people.
Facebook are also now focussing on the stats that really matter to any business, likes, comments and shares. If your story has a reach of a million but nobody has liked the post, Facebook will say that it has little value and restrict its exposure, get likes and comments and more people will see it.
Hint: If you want feedback and comments on a post, ask for it; always helps.
And finally, Facebook is now going to give priority to posts which use the link system within Facebook. Many businesses like to use the link preview, but still leave the URL in the text of the post. Facebook have found that users prefer it to be purely a link so please stop leaving the URL in the post itself and you are likely to find that more people will see the information you are posting. To do this simply add the URL in your post, and once Facebook has added a shortcut to the link, delete the URL in your text.
Good post
So to summarise, if you want more people to see your posts:
Only link to other pages using Facebook if you think users will not click away from it quickly.
Encourage likes and comments within your posts
After adding a link to a post, remove the URL from it, leaving only the Facebook image link.
And remember that you can upload your own image to make a link look more appealing; the optimum image size is 484×252 pixels.
Happy posting!
