Tech Tips for Writers: Ways to Get Your Facebook Page Noticed

Facebook is undeniably the king of social media, yet the site is a mystery to many of us who use it for more than keeping up with which friends just got engaged and the most recent cat meme. It’s clear we need to better understand the social media giant if we want to be successful in growing our audience.

Let’s dig in.

The Facts

1. 1.2 billion people are on Facebook. (Yes, that’s Billion.)
2. Nearly one-third of American adults get their news from Facebook.
3. Facebook accounted for one out every six minutes Americans spent online in December 2013.

The Newsfeed

In December of 2013, Facebook tweaked its Newsfeed algorithms again. The Newsfeed is what every user sees upon login, the stream of news, cat memes, photos, and links that your friends and pages are recommending. Only you don’t see them ALL—you only see what Facebook thinks you want to see. And last December’s tweaks made it a bit harder for certain types of posts to gain traction, specifically posts from Pages.

Yes, you can sort your Newsfeed by “Most Recent” (what I prefer) and “All Friends” to see a broader scope, yet I suspect many people never do this. So you need to learn how to get FB to recommend your posts if you want them seen by the largest numbers of people who have “liked” your page.

(It should be pointed out again that I’m dealing with PAGES here, not PERSONAL FB accounts. I know there are a lot of pros and cons for Page vs. Personal account, and I’m not here to debate them all. I’ll save that for a future post.)

Facebook’s clear goal is to keep users engaged with high-quality content:

When the typical user logs on to Facebook, there are about 1,600 possible items the company could show in the news feed based on that person’s friends and what pages they follow. Even the most avid user looks at only the top 200 or so. So Facebook spends a lot of time trying to make sure those top items are compelling.

So how do you make sure your posts measure up?

The Tips

Tip #1: Photos & The Link-Share Post

FB’s most recent changes have DECREASED the visibility of text-only posts from Pages. However, the visibility on photo and link-share posts has INCREASED.

What does a correct photo post look like?

You want your posts to look like this:

Instead of:

All you need to do is write your text and paste your link in the status box. Once FB registers the image in your post, delete the link from the comment box. Your image is still in place and the user will be able to click it. And more:

For the most part, this happens automatically. When Page owners or other users add a link to a status update, Facebook usually automatically kicks in and embeds a preview into the update. But users who delete the preview, or update their page using a third-party tool that doesn’t automatically include a link-share preview will now see their posts get less penetration.

I have noticed that when my WordPress blogs automatically feed posts to my Page, the post formatting contains no large, engaging image to grab attention. The resulting number of views for those blog posts significantly drops on my Page.

A link-share post is a post you share by clicking on a “Share on Facebook” button around the Web. This way, you are driving content TO Facebook, which Facebook loves.

Tip #2: Change Your Cover Photo
This helps to keep your page fresh. Cover photos should be 851 pixels wide and 315 pixels tall. Here are some great tips, examples and templates:
http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/facebook-cover-photos-best-practices-ht

Tip #3: Put the “Social” in Social Network

1. Engage your followers! Ask questions, and respond to comments and questions on your page.
2. Do NOT just cross post from Twitter. You should create posts for Facebook. This doesn’t mean you can’t ever cross-post, but realize that these two social media platforms are unique. A 120-character post (with abbreviations and hashtags) is going to look strange in your user’s Newsfeed.
3. Monitor your page. Don’t just post and run away. If you don’t have time to monitor it, then don’t post until you DO have time to monitor it.
4. Like/share/engage with other pages. Facebook works on the snowball theory…the more people that like and share posts, the more people that see them.

Did this not address your FB questions? Don’t worry! There’s a lot to cover with regards to Facebook. I’ll touch on more issues in future Tech Tips.

And if you’re active on Facebook, please like my page here: https://www.facebook.com/joannashupeauthor. I’ll keep the cat memes down to a minimum, I swear.

Posted by Joanna Shupe on February 20, 2014

https://thevioletfemmes.wordpress.com/2014/02/20/tech-tips-for-writers-ways-to-get-your-facebook-page-noticed/