It’s the aim of any social media page to have your content seen by as many people as possible. However, in the case of Facebook, the greater number of fans you have on your page, the harder you will have to work to ensure that your content features regularly.
While most people would complain about Edgerank, it’s really there to ensure only the best content appears in your feed. So how do you make sure that your content appears on feeds regularly? Here’s the best methods to increase the number of people seeing your content.
1. Be Consistent
One of the bigger problems certain pages experience is that they will post numerous times a day before quickly tapering off. Instead, ensure that you’re posting regularly, at least once a day to start off, and work from there. When your posts begin to perform better, you can then increase the output for different times.
2. Keep It Short And Concise
Unless you have an incredibly interesting story to share, chances are the majority of your followers aren’t going to read what you have to say. So when posting something, treat it as if you were posting onto Twitter and keep it short.
3. The Power Of Imagery
We’ve spoken many times before about how powerful images are on Facebook, and it’s no surprise that that they’re both the most popular and shared type of content on the site. Their importance is so great that Facebook’s latest redesign is centered around this.
The next time you post something, make the main focus an image and accompany it with a short blurb (and shortened URL if needed). Provided that the image is good, it will help draw them in.
4. Quality Over Quantity
This is a rather obvious one, but when you’re posting content, you want to try and ensure that all posts going up are interesting in their own right. Just posting numerous links without any break will have a greater chance of being ignored. So instead of posting five or six links a day, why not focus on just one great post. Chances are you’ll see greater engagement over the long term.
5. Don’t Delete Posts
If you can help it that is. Sometimes you will post something by accident, or notice a typo before it’s too late. Unfortunately Facebook does not have an edit function for status updates so you will either have to live with it, or delete the post entirely. Unless, you’ve posted something absolutely terrible, refrain from deleting a post as it will impact negatively on your Edgerank status.
If your post has a typo in it, it’s better to hold your hands up and acknowledge the mistake instead of deleting it entirely.
6. Understand The Weight Of Actions
No actions are the same on Facebook and unsurprisingly different actions have varying effects on your Edgerank status. For one, shares carry the most weight since it gives your content a greater chance of appearing in feeds. Next comes comments, then likes and finally clicks.
Saying you should aim for shares is a rather short-sighted advice so instead, take a look at a number of pages, both similar and different to your own, and see what type of content gets shared the most. It will give you ideas as to the type of sharable content that can tie into your own page.
7. Study Insights
Facebook Insights is there for a good reason and while it’s a little annoying that the dashboard has replaced notifications with a promoted post section, really the only thing you should be looking at is your analytics.
For each post, you’ll see the reach, virality and how many people interacted with it. While likes, shares and comments give you an idea, comparing them to the stats here will give you the entire picture. Also, if you want, you can download a spreadsheet containing data from Insights if you want to look deeper.
8. Time Your Posts
It’s not rocket science to know that posting at certain times works better than others. Figuring out the right times is a case of trial and error but once you know, posting content at those times will see greater engagement since there will be more people to see it.
Scheduling posts for these times through Facebook itself will ensure that you won’t miss a day. Also, don’t be afraid to schedule posts for the weekend as you could easily be missing a large audience there if you’re not.
9. Ask Questions
Always a great way to engage with people, asking questions can help get your followers talking and interacting with you. So long as the questions aren’t patronizing, or follow a “like if you think x is right, comment if you think y is good” template, there will always be followers out there who will like to engage.
10. Respond To Comments
When users have made the effort to interact with you, you should take a moment to respond to some of the comments, which can help propel a discussion forward. Again, the advice of quality over quantity springs to mind so comment when you have something interesting or witty to say. It’s not really worth responding to one worded comments with a thanks as a simple like can help show your appreciation.
11. Create Albums
Tying in with the idea of images, albums are also a great way of improving your Edgerank status. The reason being that albums encourage clicks, have a greater chance of being viewed since people will want to see all of them and they always appear differently in news feeds. You only have to think about any time your friends’ post an album to understand this so provided the images are interesting, they can help you out.
12. Cross-Promote
If you have more than one account, why not direct your Twitter followers to a specific post? Granted, this should be done sparingly, but it can give certain posts a new lease of life.
13. Pay To Promote
If you have a good post and you think it needs that extra push, then paying to promote it can help it out. Only thing to be aware of is that the quality of likes and comments you get mightn’t be what you’re aiming for so use it to promote content that’s performing well anyway to get the best results.
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