Take Advantage of the New Facebook Algorithm

5 Ways to Make Your Posts Pay Off

In January, Facebook announced that the company would be rolling out a new algorithm controlling the posts that its users see in their news feed. Mark Zuckerberg explained that the intent behind the changes to the algorithm was a desire on the company’s part to prioritize posts from friends and family over those from businesses.

Businesses weren’t happy. Honestly, I don’t think the algorithm is working well for me personally, either, because I find that posts from friends that get a lot of comments or “likes” remain at the top of the feed, making it more difficult to see newer posts.

But, there are ways to take advantage of the new algorithm–as well as ways to improve the performance of a company’s posts.

1. Encourage employees and your personal friends to share your company’s posts. Because the new algorithm values content from individuals more than from companies, a share from an individual increases the chances for further distribution.
2. Post as often as possible—but the quality of the post is more important than quantity. In the new algorithm, posts do not remain near the top of a news feed long. It has been reported that 3 hours is about average. So, some businesses attempt to post multiple times a day. For most of my small businesses, that isn’t reasonable. Facebook does reward quality, though. So, make sure that your posts are informative and relevant to the interests of your customers.
3. An engaging post is a quality post. How does Facebook know that your customers consider a post informative and relevant? They see what Facebook users do with it. Do they click on links? Do they “like” or “share” it? Do they make a comment? More of your “followers” will see a post if past posts receive a high degree of engagement. To get a sense of the level of engagement your posts have historically received, you can review the Insights tab on your Facebook business page. This will help you understand which posts are most popular with your customers.

There are many ways to improve engagement that you may not have tried. For example, pose a question, try a poll, or try to tease followers to click through to a blog post to find the answer to a compelling question.

4. Every time you are successful in compelling some type of engagement to a Facebook post, make sure that you reply to the customer. A “thanks for your comment” or a “thanks for the share” will encourage more of the same.
5. Make sure that every post includes an image or video. A post without some kind of image is not likely to be successful. Videos have proven to be especially engaging and tend to get a higher level of distribution. If you have a proprietary video with text subtitles, Facebook users can preview the content of the video without clicking on it, since videos play automatically without sound as users scroll by them.

Finally, a business will get greater results by advertising on Facebook. An unpaid post will be seen by at most 15-16% of the company’s Facebook followers. By advertising, or “boosting a post”, it can be seen by people outside of the company’s group of followers. You can choose both demographic and geographic targets for the sponsored post.

1^st Click Consulting has the expertise to improve the value of a company’s social media activities. We can create all a company’s posts, handle social media advertising, and send reports showing the results of these activities. Or, if a business has in-house staff available to manage the social media activities, 1^st Click Consulting can provide a social media strategy designed to maximize the work of the staff. (Until June 30, 2018 we are offering a $150 discount on a customized social media strategy to guide your own staff in handling the company’s social media. Contact us here for more information.)

For assistance with your Facebook marketing, give us a call or send us an email here.