Facebook. Argh. Many of us know that it’s very hard to be seen in the Facebook newsfeed now. You only have to look at the stats on each update to your FB page to glean that information. Still, all is not lost. There’s still a couple of things you can do to improve your chances of being seen organically (without having to pay to BOOST a post!)
1. Post at least one update a day linking to an article from a reputable online news source
I’ve tried this on a few accounts that I admin and it really DOES make a difference. Facebook seems to favour content from trusted sites (like The Guardian, ABC, The Independent etc). It bumps it into the newsfeed where it gets more interaction, thus increasing your page engagement. If you don’t believe me, try this for a week and see!
If you’re not sure how to find the kinds of things you want to post, try setting up a Google Alert for keywords (baking! parenting! art!) You can configure this so that you get a daily update to your inbox from Google listing what it deems to be the most relevant news articles that mentioned your keyword that day. Then you can trawl through and find things to post.
2. Great images are super important
Facebook recently suggested that your post stands more chance of being seen if you let FB auto-load the image from whatever link you are posting (and don’t include a link in the text area of your FB update). In my experience, this isn’t always true and the image on offer is not always attractive. To combat this, I upload a great image manually. In my experience, an ace manually uploaded image does just as well, if not better then FB’s automatically generated image for that post.
So curate the best image possible – even if it means going the manual upload route – because pretty pictures = engagement!
Have you got any Facebook secret weapons?!
Great tips Pip! I’ve just set my Google alerts and looking forward to seeing what sort of content comes up and how well it shares x
Hi there Pip. Great post and I too love the idea of the google alert (which I had no idea about by the way). I have a question, will you be covering how to manually upload an image on FB. I have tried, but I can’t seem to get it right. Thanks xx
Hi Sarah! You add your link and text in a status update.
Facebook will auto-load an image and blurb from that link for you.
BEFORE hitting ‘POST’ – choose the UPLOAD IMAGE option that appears over the image in the post – and then upload your own. This is also your chance to edit the auto-loaded text too!
Good luck! Have a go – you can always delete a post that doesn’t turn out right and have another try! x
I love the idea of Google alert. I’m a bit over Facebook right now but still want interesting things to read & share so this could be a winner x
Oh it’s SUPER USEFUL, reannon. And it means you aren’t churning out the same old stuff as everyone else! #win!