As many of you might know, over the past couple of weeks Facebook made an algorithm change to the way they show your fan page updates to your fans.
People everywhere are seeing a decline in the reach of their status updates in a move that seems like Facebook is “bullying” fan page owners to pay for people to see what they have to say. It appears Facebook is even admitting this is happening.
All over the web I see people whining how it’s unfair and crying how it’s bad for their businesses.
Sure, it sucks. But get over it. They can do whatever they want, it’s their website.
It’s Not all Gloom and Doom
I still absolutely love building fan pages to drive traffic to my websites. In fact it is my favorite traffic source.
What I’m learning is that you can still get some good reach with your updates. One of my test fan pages is actually seeing its reach increase once I made a few tweaks. With 40,000 fans on it, each post I’m doing now is seeing anywhere between 25,000 to 90,000 reach organically.
The main difference between now and a month or so ago is the rules have changed. You can’t just throw up a picture of a cute puppy and have it go viral (well you can if you’re doing it right).
How To Increase Your Reach
1. Post Quality Content
Facebook wants quality. Your content needs to be good enough that people will want to share, like, and comment without you having to ask them. If you keep putting up crappy content, it’s no wonder nobody is seeing it. Without interaction from your fans, few people will ever see it.
2. Image Updates Win
Maybe other people have seen different results from me, but image updates tend to get a much further reach than plain text or links. Just remember you can put your link in an image update. Make sure your image stands out and can be viewed easily on a mobile device. Use big easy to read text on images that make people want to click and interact with it.
3. Mix Up Your Content
While images tend to have the longest shelf life and furthest reach, keep testing to see what your specific audience reacts best with. The new way links are showing up in newsfeed makes them show similarly to an image as it generally pulls a larger thumbnail from your link. Just make sure you’re linking to quality content.
4. Ask People
If you’re providing value to your fans, ask them to go to your page and select “show in news feed”. Your updates will then show up a majority of the time in their feed.
Periodically ask them to check this and more people will start to see your content.
5. Ask Questions
It’s looking like comments, likes and shares are what Facebook wants to see on your posts. Ask your fans questions and get them interacting. Once you ask them though, make sure to reply to each one. It’s called social media for a reason.
6. Build a Relationship
Your fans probably won’t last long if you don’t build a relationship with them. Be consistent and post daily so they will become familiar with you or your brand. Don’t worry, you can schedule all of your posts well in advance. I use FPTraffic to schedule all of my image posts. But even if you schedule your posts, don’t forget about your fans. Comment on their comments. Let them know you’re listening. They will interact more.
While every audience is different, keep trying to see what works for yours. You can still make fan pages work for your business without having to pay for every update.
