Do you have a Facebook page like many other businesses do? If so, then you should also be concerned about something many people involved in SEO have observed. That is, business pages seem to be generally ignored in Facebook’s news feed. Some leading SEO company professionals are even complaining that Facebook is deliberately ignoring business pages so you’ll be forced to pay for a “priority slot” in their news feed.

As things stand right now, it’s likely that only about seven percent of your target audience actually get to see your posts. But, before you rush to pay for an increase in viewership, you may want to try improving your exposure in Facebook’s news feed by making a few tweaks to your page first.

EdgeRank

What is EdgeRank and why does it matter? You may not realize it, but Facebook has an algorithm that largely dictates how much of the content you have on their site is shown to your target audience and what percentage of that audience will actually see each post.

This is EdgeRank and it is the biggest reason why only about seven percent of your target audience gets to see your posts. Once you reach a decent number of fans on Facebook, therefore, your focus needs to shift from trying to acquire more fans to trying to reach as many of those fans as you can. Here are some tips on how you can possibly double the current percentage of your audience who sees your posts:

EdgeRank is the biggest reason why you may not have the kind of visibility you expect on Facebook. Image source

1. Measure Your Current Reach

Each business page is different and may have a different set of data. It would be wise for you to find out exactly how well you’re faring in terms of reaching your target audience on Facebook. You just might find that the biggest reason why you’re not getting the results you expect from this social networking site is the fact that you’re not reaching enough of your fan base.

To determine your reach, you simply need to check your statistics on Facebook Insights. Get the total of your reach within the last month and then divide the result by your total number of fans.

Facebook also reveals the number of people that saw each post. If most of your posts are seen by only a small percentage of your fans, the problem could lie either in your content, or the time at which you post.

To ensure your posts get maximum visibility, it’s important that you schedule your posts at a time when most of your fans are likely to be online. This would depend on your time-zone and the demographics of your fan base. A process of trial and error and monitoring how many people see your posts at different times will help you decide on the best posting schedule.

2. Go Viral

There are several ways for you to make your Facebook page go viral, but perhaps the most effective is by running a contest.

If you have a good fan base already, you could create a buzz around your page by choosing a theme and then asking your fans to upload photos in accordance with the theme. Announce that winners would be chosen based on the number of likes each photo gets.

This results in your page link getting shared several times by your fans in their efforts to win the contest. Perhaps the best thing about such contests is that it doesn’t require expensive prizes. Even something as simple as gift checks and getting the winning photo posted as your page’s cover photo is enough to get people excited.

If your social reach is dismal or less that what you’d like it to be, you have start putting a strategy in place to increase fan engagement. The following are among the three best practices that can help:

a) In all probability the demographic profile a large section of your fans’ friends will be similar to theirs. So, if your reach level has become dismal, using Facebook’s ‘Promote This Post’ feature may help. It will improve your post’s visibility, and it will appear in the feeds of your fans’ friends as well. However, you should only use this option for your best posts, or those associated with a promotion you are running.

b)  Create content that your target market would like and find a way to associate your brand with the same. Look at SproutFoods Facebook page, for example.  They do a great job of engaging young mothers with a good mix of fun graphics, baby food advice, and interactive promotional post.

c) Organize giveaways and contests for your Facebook fans. If you use the Fangate, you can encourage non-fans to like your page as well.  Make sure though that the giveaway or prize is related to your brand or branding message in someway. If you are B2C this may be easy, since you can give away one of your products. But, for B2Bs organizing successful contests maybe more challenging.

A good strategy for B2Bs, therefore, is to offer information products like whitepapers, free seats in a webinar, third party invites to coveted Industry events, etc. This way they can use the prizes to add to their brand value.

3. Use Photos to Your Advantage

When we talk about content, we’re not just talking about pure text articles. Particularly in a social platform like Facebook, pure text is significantly less effective than other types of content such as photos.

If you want to increase your visibility on this platform, therefore, you need to share more photos and focus less on status updates. You may even use photos on your Facebook page to drive more traffic to your company website by providing a link on the caption that accompanies each photo.

Perhaps the best thing about photos where Facebook is concerned is that it has been shown to be the most visible type of content on the site.

Pictures, in fact are a great way to generate likes for your promotional posts as well. As per a Hubspot study pictures on Facebook get 53% more likes than the average post! So, if promotional posts are accompanied by attention grabbing pictures they are likely to receive more traction.

You can increase your visibility on Facebook by running a contest and going viral. Image source

4. Post Relevant Content Only

A lot of businesses make the mistake of posting random content just to get likes. While it may get them some short-term attention, such posts do nothing for the business’ brand value, and even tend to put off genuine fans.

‘Relevant’ doesn’t mean promotional, but content that’s in someway related to your niche, and that your fans would find useful. For instance, while posting funny e-cards and captions may not drive much engagement to a social media company’s Facebook page, an infographic about ‘funny status updates’ that generated a lot of likes probably would.

5. Engage

Engagement is still the primary goal of social media marketing. Therefore, you should do whatever you can to engage your fans and keep them interested in your brand. One very effective way to engage people is by uploading a photo and then asking an open-ended question in the description. Not only will this invite discussion, but it will also encourage people to share your photo, so don’t forget to add a link to your page in the description.

The ‘Like If’ approach works really well too, especially, if you can create a post, graphic, or video that creates an instant emotional connection, or can make people laugh.

Interactive posts related to key events, dates and news developments also tend to drive engagement. However, as a business you have to pick and choose, which dates, events, and/or developments you want to be associated with.

For instance, if you run a fashion and accessories business, you may want to be associated with Valentine’s Day. You could upload a picture of a stunning new top with a question like, ‘What would you pair this top with on your Valentine’s Day Date?’

While these strategies may not be able to extend your reach to a hundred percent of your fans, but they can certainly improve your results.

In order to make sure that the added exposure gets you maximum leverage, it’s a good idea to add a call to action in your posts, wherever it seems appropriate. It could be on the lines of ‘Like Us For More Updates’ or ‘Visit Our Online Store’.  To track the leads and clicks that you get from these posts, you can tag the URLs , through Google Analytics, or use bit.ly’s URl shortner.

These tips should hopefully help you increase your social influence and build greater fan engagement. Good Luck!

About the Author:

Emma-Julie Fox writes for Pitstop Media Inc, a Vancouver company that provides SEO services to businesses across North America. If you would like to invite the author to write on your blog too please contact www.pitstopmedia.com