The first thing to understand when you are trying to crack or hack the secret to Facebook and social media exposure is, do what Facebook wants.
This really applies to Google, Instagram, Linked In, or even your business referrers. If you want to leverage any of these to get yourself more business then you need to do what they (the platform) want.
What does Facebook want?
Well, obviously they aren’t a charity who exist for the betterment of society. What Facebook wants is money. Facebook is a free platform (free to use). As my husband always says, if something is free then you are the product.
So if Facebook is free to the user, and therefore the user is the product, then how does Facebook make money? The shortest way to answer this is, by people spending time on the platform. They definitely don’t make money by someone logging in, just looking at and seeing your posts, just liking those, then logging out again. You need to be part of a bigger conversation (the newsfeed) in order for your business page or personal profile to be of interest to Facebook.
I might add here that Facebook says that their newsfeed algorithm is not about making money, it is about a ‘better user experience’ and many other explanations, but hopefully you are grown up enough to realise that the goal of any business is indeed to make money (particularly a business that is listed on the stockmarket). Also, as stated above, this is the shortest explanation I could come up with for how to understand Facebook reach, making money is not a simple goal in and of itself and you do need to look after your customer base in order to make money. However, for the purposes of this post and helping you with your Facebook business page, we will use this framework.
Whatever else they are trying to do, remember that Facebook needs people to spend time on Facebook, including engaging with and responding to varied and different content on Facebook. This is why they penalise you (in reach) if you include a link that takes a viewer off the platform.
Do Page likes matter?
Yes and no. Page likes are good for social proof (that is, when other people look at your page it is good if you have more likes as that tells the person you are trustworthy or liked). It is important for you to understand though that 200 page likes does not mean that 200 people see your posts. There are varying statistics but when you share a post on your Facebook page you are doing well if 20% of the people who like your page see it.
Some percentages I have found, 6.4% of your Page’s likes see your content, or 5.5% , or 1% to 6% . Even if these stats are a little low, page likes aren’t going to get you ‘reach’ and certainly posting something on your page is not an effective means of communicating with your followers, unless your post is engaging.
Facebook itself says that an average person could see 1,500+ posts every time they log on and Facebook needs to reduce that to 300. That is 1/5 of the potential content, so 20%. Now you and I know that when we log on to Facebook we are not offered 300 fresh posts. I haven’t counted but I definitely do not see 300 fresh posts before I start seeing stuff that has already been shown to me.
So what does that mean?
So if page likes aren’t the goal, then what should I be doing?
Posts that get high engagement are shared more on the Facebook newsfeed because if people like what they see then they stay on the platform. This is also why divisive and inflammatory posts get more reach, there is some debate about whether that is an intentional goal of Facebook or just the by product of doing things by AI, but I think any Facebook user knows that they are offered more inflammatory posts and less personal posts from friends than they would like. The algorithm is just sharing more of what people already engage with, which results in more engagement, which results in more sharing and exposure, and so on.
Reach isn’t a reward for marketers who do a good job, the algorithm is just looking for content that people want. What do your people want? What makes them engage with your content? Facebook likes it when you get people to engage with your content. When you get people to engage with your content that means that when you post the occasional sales pitch that this post will gain benefit from the reach that you get through all your other posts.
So what do I do?
Look at your page Insights, know your page data, what is working and what isn’t working?
Look at all different elements of the post, not just the content but what time you posted it, did it include a photo, was the photo professional or personal, was it a call to action sales post or was it providing free information or was it just a bit of fun? Was it a video? Did you share it on your feed or in stories, or both? You need to do more of what your followers like to get more engagement, so that your posts get more reach, so that you can then (occasionally, not all the time) post your call to action or sales posts.