Yes, it’s true: Facebook doesn’t show all your posts to your fans in their Newsfeed (same goes for the posts of your friends by the way). Facebook works with an algorithm called Edgerank that decides what fans will (and won’t) see in their news feed.
There are several things what you can do, but let’s start with the most effective tip (which is probably the most unknown):
#1 – Inform your fans about the functionality “Get Notifications”
When you go to a Facebook Page that you Like you can hover over the Like button, and you will get to see the option “Get Notifications”
Now that you know this, you can also inform your fans about this functionality by making a visual showing them where to click, and post this on your Facebook page. You can also “pin” that post to your Facebook Page: Pinned posts are Page posts that admins have chosen to display prominently at the top of their Page. A pinned post always appears in the top left of a Page’s timeline and has a flag in its top-right corner. A post a Page admin pins to the top of their Page will remain there for 7 days. After that, it’ll return to the date it was posted on the Page’s timeline.
Make sure not to only inform people via Facebook about this functionality cause remember they don’t see all your posts in their newsfeed (yet) 😉
#2 Add content to your Facebook Page directly on Facebook
I know: there is amazing third party software available that allows you to manage all your social media channels from one platform. But it is very likely that Facebook will favour posts directly posted on their platform versus posts that were submitted via external software…
#3 Your Facebook posts need to evoke interaction
When your posts is generating a lot of interaction in the form of Likes, Comments & Shares, Facebook will mark that content as important, and will decide to show it to a higher number of your fans. Simply put to beat Edgerank your content needs to evoke a reaction or an emotion. Interesting to know: research showed that in Edgerank a Comment is 4x as important as Like. Meaning that asking a good question will bring you more reach than a simple fact. And the apogee is getting a Share: a post that has been Shared will get 11x more reach than a post that got a Like, and 3x more reach than a post that received a Comment…
#4 Learn from your Facebook Insights
I can’t repeat this enough: you can learn a lot by checking your insights. For example which post formats worked best, you can even learn ‘when’ you should post so that you are posting when most of your fans are online. Just do it! 😉 Here’s a great article by Social Media Examiner on How to Use Facebook Insights: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/new-facebook-insights/
#5 Cross channel promotion
In Belgium there are 11 million people: more than 5,5 million of these are on Facebook so a little cross channel promotion might do the trick. For example when you post something on Facebook why not post an update on LinkedIn directly linking to the post on Facebook. Same goes for Twitter and other channels. Of course do it with common sense, meaning don’t do it for every post and select relevant & important posts.
Hope this was helpful, if you have any other suggestions or ideas please share them via a reply on this post.