How Facebook Administrators Can Improve the Visibility of Their Posts

The last couple of blog posts, we focused on this whole EdgeRank issue and how it impacts the users on Facebook – in particular, the inability to see all of the status updates for the pages they follow.

Last week, we posted a helpful post whereby the every day users of Facebook could reclaim their Facebook status feeds.

Today, we are going to turn the focus from the individual user to the administrators of Facebook page(s) and other Facebook Fan page owners responsible for updating the status posts for their audience.

So how’d we get here? There was a time when all your fans saw all your posts on their newsfeed. Over time, the visible status posts became less and less visible (unless people were continuously interacting with the page).

Facebook is now using something called EdgeRank which is essentially a program that determines who will and who won’t see your posts.

This is disconcerting for most businesses – particularly small businesses, non-profits and others without the deep pockets to pay to promote their content.

You most likely won’t be able to reclaim the entire fan audience that once “liked” your page, but there are some things you can do to move the odds back into your favor.

To get a refresher on the whole EdgeRank thing, please go back and review the previous post http://e-mergemarketing.net/2012/10/17/what-do-you-mean-not-everyone-sees-my-posts/. This will provide a refresher of what exactly this EdgeRank issue is all about.

How can I gain the upper edge?

Unless you have the ability to create highly interesting, relevant and extremely compelling status updates on a continuous basis that historically have netted many comments on your Facebook page, start thinking about shifting the focus to providing less original content and link that message to more off-site content.

Generally speaking, the only way to maintain your visibility in your audience’s newsfeed is for them to take some sort of action (sharing, commenting or liking your posts).

A good strategy for this is to drive traffic BACK to Facebook from a blog for example.

Consider this – if you start placing Facebook updates on your blog instead, the blog can then forward those updates back to your Facebook page in a way that inspires clicks – ultimately giving EdgeRank what it wants – interaction. Interaction means more visibility.
If you don’t already have a blog, consider setting one up – this can be beneficial in other areas of online marketing as well (such as SEO).

The biggest (and best) in the world of blogging is WordPress but other blogging software will work just fine.

Rather than spinning out of control and moving this discussion into an entirely different direction, suffice it to say there are numerous places you can go to learn how to easily setup a blog for your business – many of which can be done within a mere couple of hours.

Of course, the other alternative is to contact us to help get that functionality for your business, we are a very good resource for creating a strategy or connecting you directly with organizations who can do this for you.

Once the blog is up and running, make sure you have setup something called an RSS feed (allows subscribers to automatically get your blog updates). Setting up an RSS feed is a feature available on any blog site.

To connect your blog back to Facebook, login to Facebook with the personal profile used to create the fan page and sign up for something called RSS Graffiti (in the search bar, type in “RSS Graffiti” and hit search).

Goto the App (click on the Goto App button), and click on Allow to grant permission to the App to “Manage your pages”, etc.

 

 

 

Click on the “+” to Add a New Publishing Page

 

 

 

 

Name your page (mine is eMergeOnlineMarketing) and click Create Publishing Page.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Under “Sources” add the name of your blog’s RSS feed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the Setup screen that appears, change the Frequency to “As soon as possible” and the “Maximum Posts per Update” to 1 post.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Click on Advanced at the top.

Change the selection in the first box to “Static Text” and the Static Text box, type:

Please click “Like” “Share”, and “Comment” … we love to hear back from you!

Click “Save” at the bottom.

Back to the Publishing Plan screen, click on the Add New Target option

 

 

 

 

 

 

Select your Fan page from the Choose Target list, select the identity you want those status posts to tie to (use the page name for this option, not the individual user). Make sure Post Style is set to Standard. You can scroll to the bottom of the window to preview what your status updates on Facebook will look like and Save the changes.

Finally, turn on the publishing plan by sliding the option between the Sources and Target from Off to On.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Going forward, you can use your blog to update your Facebook status, your posts will all be sent to your followers newsfeed AND they will be prompted to become more engaged (from the text you added above in the Static Text Box).

Going forward EdgeRank will still be the deciding force when it comes to who sees your posts. These steps will help you prompt more interaction.