Five Ways to Get Your Brand’s Content Into Facebook News Feeds
Are you noticing that only a fraction of your Facebook fans are seeing your content?
Facebook made some changes to their News Feed algorithm recently, causing lower organic reach for most brand pages. One report shows drops in organic reach as much as 40%, and we’ve seen similar dramatic decreases on pages we manage as well.
Facebook’s goal is to show its users more high quality news stories, and it has many brands scrambling to develop strategies to engage their fans.
Here are five ways to help get your brand’s content into users’ News Feeds:
Create engaging content. First and foremost, create content that entertains, informs or engages your audience. This is key to boosting visibility because the more people that engage with your content, the more it spreads across users’ News Feeds.
Use calls to action. When a user interacts with your content, with a like, comment or share, it creates a ripple effect, showing that interaction on the user’s friends’ News Feeds. This is the kind of “viral” effect that you want. Make sure you ask users to do something. Asking them to “read more,” “share with” or “tell us what you think” encourages interaction.
Put the focus back on outbound links. Although past reports have shown that images generate 53% higher engagement, Facebook’s algorithm changes give more weight to links from outside the site, rather than text-only status updates. When you share links, make sure that you’re not just embedding them into your status update, but that the link is creating a media-rich preview box, complete with an image and summary. This improves the experience for users, and encourages engagement. (And with the release of Facebook Paper, this type of visually compelling content is more important than ever.)
Don’t just talk about your brand. Many brands forget that the point of Facebook is to join the conversation – it’s not just a self-promotional tool. Make sure your are sharing third party content that is of interest to your audience, and not just talking about your business and products or services all the time.
Study your audience. Use Facebook’s “Insights” tool to learn more about your audience – how old they are, where they live, how they access your page. You can even see what times they are more active online and which posts they engage with the most (under the “Posts” tab). This information will help you cater content to those who matter most.
The reality is, even if you follow these suggestions, many brands will now be forced to pay to play. When the time comes to use Facebook Ads, it’s important to create ad copy that doesn’t look like a marketing message, but instead encourages conversation and engagement. After all, these ads will be appearing in News Feeds alongside regular updates from friends and Pages. And make sure to use what you’ve learned about your audience through Facebook Insights to target specific users demographics and interests.
Combining these efforts – smart content creation, sharing and paid promotion – will help expand the reach of your content on Facebook.
