News
How to Reach Your Facebook Fans
Are your Facebook Business Pages reaching less and less of your fans?
You’re not alone; it’s a common issue for business owners. The cynic in me wants to see the glass half empty and say it’s corporate greed, Facebook just wants to ring your bank account by the neck until they have taken every extra dime you have left. After all, the whole reason Social Media was such a popular notion was the low-cost. Now it seems you need to pay for the same reach you used to receive organically.
Addressing the issue
Brian Boland (VP Advertising Technology at Facebook) addresses this very subject. The reasoning behind the lack of reach is far less sinister than we originally thought, and it’s pretty simple. There is a huge surplus of content available each time someone looks at his or her news feed. At any time, there are between 1,500 and 15,000 potential stories to be displayed on someone’s newsfeed when they view it (and that information is over a year old).
Guess how many stories are displayed within the average NewsFeed? The answer is 300. This extreme competition – for your fans attention – has to be addressed before they have the opportunity to scroll through 1,500 possible stories and identify which ones are appealing to them. To avoid information overload, Facebook uses an algorithm that measures thousands of factors to determine which posts you see at a given time.
Can anything be done?
Yes. People who have “liked” your page already can go to your company page and “follow” you, which will increase the odds of your page showing up in their news feed. Want to do more? Not only can your fans select to follow you, they can also choose to see your content first – in their news feed – by selecting “See First” on your business page. By default, all newsfeeds show “Relevant Content” ranked, the alternative is “Newest Content”. Selecting “See First” gives your fans the power to override the “Relevant Content” algorithm and insert your new content into their NewsFeed in real time when it’s posted.
Another method to select the people, or pages you see first is by going to News Feed Preferences and selecting “Prioritize Who to See First.”