The News Feed isn’t what it used to be.
And that’s a good thing, if you know what you’re doing.
If you spend a lot of time marketing on Facebook, you’ll notice that there are different kinds of posts. Some may annoy audience and some may engage them. Some may not even reach the audience because of the changes Facebook made to the News Feed over the years.
Typically, Facebook ensures that the following stories don’t appear prominently in the News Feed:
Like-baiting posts: Posts that ask News Feed readers to comment on, like, or share to get more attention that they would normally drive.
Bait-and-switch posts: These are posts that utilize inaccurate formatting or language to get people to click on the link inside the post. However, the link redirects to something different than what is displayed to the audience.
Frequently circulated posts: These are posts containing videos and photos that get posted in the News Feed regularly. Facebook says its users find instances of repeated posts less relevant, and are likely to click on ‘I don’t want to see this’ before complaining about the brands posting them.
These are the kind of posts you should strictly avoid.
Coming back to the main subject, your posts should offer something of value to your target audience. We’ve put together 5 tips that will help your posts stand out in the News Feed and attain premium visibility results:
1. Post captivating videos
Facebook tweaked its News Feed algorithm in an attempt to provide better videos to its audience. The new video ranking system considers whether people actually see the video, and for how long, before deciding who else sees the video in their feed. In other words, it takes into account the relevancy of the content presented in the video, not the number of likes, shares and comments it receives.
For greater attention, brands need to post exclusive videos and include links to content such as their products/services. Facebook provides analytics for brands to see how their videos are performing; these also help in detecting what parts of the video can be improved upon. Videos that perform well are the ones that are timely and short, and grab audience attention from the start.
Foot Locker is an example of a brand that uses short videos really well:
The company showcases upcoming products in hyper-lapse videos, and most of its video posts get a lot of attention from its audience, as well as those who haven’t heard of the company before.
You can also utilize Facebook video ads to increase the reach of your video content.
2. Post at the right time
Do you know when your audience is online? After Facebook overhauled its analytics dashboard, you don’t require a lot of monitoring or guesswork to figure out the most opportune time to post.
The tool ‘When Your Fans Are Online’ (available in the Facebook Insights dashboard) can be used by brands to see when their target audience is online. Since the News Feed algorithm has made it difficult for posts to gain more visibility in audiences’ news feeds, posting when your audience is online can drive more attention to your posts.
Facebook said that posts that people didn’t scroll enough to discover can reappear in their news feeds if they are engaged with. As the algorithm awards most engaging posts, posting when your fans are online will give your post a chance for higher engagement, which can make it reappear in people’s news feed days later, without any advertising.
3. Encourage conversation
The exposure you get in the News Feed depends on the value and weight of your posts. Because conversations are valued on Facebook, post thought-provoking questions that ultimately improve your content’s weight.
By posting questions and asking for suggestions, you’ll encourage audience to interact with your brand and be a part of a bigger conversation in the News Feed. The more responses, the more others would want to get involved, which would increase your post’s value, giving it higher visibility in people’s News Feed.
Inc. Magazine does this on its Facebook page:
Even though the company targets entrepreneurs and businessmen, both of whom are short on time to login to their Facebook accounts and comment on brand pages, the magazine is able to generate decent conversation with such posts. It’s a good idea to relate questions to the lifestyle of your target audience.
4. Don’t be afraid to entertain
Your audience may not necessarily be in buying mode when they witness your brand on Facebook, and if ‘being salesy’ is the only impression you’re able to deliver, they may unfollow your Facebook page, which would eliminate your posts from appearing in their News Feed.
As a result, try to add variety to your posts by posting content that isn’t directly related to your brand, but incorporates some fun element like a challenge that your target audience would enjoy. This can result in significant engagement, driving greater attention to your posts.
Here’s a post shared by ThinkGeek:
The brand talked about a sci-fi series that premiered in 1999. It didn’t include any products ThinkGeek have in stock, but the post took the audience back in time, and generated a lot of buzz.
5. Post relevant offers
Offers are engaging because they provide value to your audience; this makes them more likely to appear in their News Feed as fans engage with posts related to offers. If your post receives a good response, it will gain a higher rank – which will result in more visibility down the road.
You can offer any incentive that serves a purpose. It could be something like an opportunity to download a free copy of a recipe book if you’re in the food business. While creating an offer-based post, you have the option of using Custom Audiences to create News Feed ads to drive more interest towards the offer.
Here is an example from Robin Sharma’s Facebook page:
The free copy post received a lot of engagement in the form of likes and comments. The latter significantly increased the value of the post, increasing the attention it gets in the News Feed.
Final thoughts
There’s no magic plan that drives audience attention to your posts in the News Feed. In essence, your success will rely on knowing your audience and finding ways to be insightful, entertaining, and relevant. Take the above-mentioned tips into account to create a plan that’s right for you.
What are your thoughts? Have you used these tips before? What other ideas for increasing News Feed attention for Facebook posts can you share? Please leave your comments below.
With all the changes to Facebook. These techniques work. Just not as well as anyone would like. From my experience. It still comes down to users mood for content they want to engage on a day to day basis. Even my Fan Page shows this. One day a user might be into politics, tragedies. The next day they may want to see cat videos. It all balls down to. You can not really predict a persons mood and what they would like to see. If it is based off of complaints. Keep things the same. Let the user decide what they want to see. I know personally. I want to see all content. I find content all the time that i am interested in. But, because of FB’s changes. I’m not able to see interesting things anymore. FB’s algorithm can not tell me what i like or when i like something. People moods change too frequently for Facebook to accurately predict what users really want to see. Sometimes changing things is more frustrating than expected. As popular as Facebook is. There shouldn’t be that many changes. It’s really not necessary. Facebook really needs to follow bloggers who are not in the corporate world. If they were smart. They would pay attention to ordinary people and not the professionals. The professionals are great for ideas and insight. But, the majority of their users are ordinary people. They could also pay attention to what people say in their news feeds. I consistently come across posts of regular people and business people complaining that Facebook has changed for the worse. Whom ever is consulting the Facebook staff and designers should be removed from their position. Maybe if Facebook followed their users. They’d know the real story of how people really feel about all the changes. I’ve read reports about what Facebook thinks they know about their customers, clients, and users. Polls, surveys do not answer or inform all details. If they actually engaged with users. They’d learn some things, professionals can not report. It’s like this. A rich man doesn’t know the struggle of a poor man, until the rich man looses everything and is forced to walk among the people he looks down upon. That is when he realizes the damage his greed has caused.
Thank you for this article. Very accurate insight on how things are supposed to work. The detail in which this article was written is commendable. I really enjoyed this article. It sparked conversation in me, enough to leave a comment. Very well done job. This is journalism at it’s best. Looking forward to reading more articles from this author.
Hey Stephen, thanks for weighing in, awesome comment!
If you know your market, you will be able to catch their attention because you know what they want and what they need.
Getting attention is the new currency! Great post… tons of free value.. a lot of these tips helped my book go viral on FB recently.. thank you for sharing!!!
WOW 2016 and twenty -six years of serving my country to fight against racist in the greatest country in the world. And here we have a Presidential candidate use such harsh and hurtful words to different groups of people. Anyone that supports someone that uses racist language is just as guilty. Country first not a political party. Mos of us won’t never use that language. And if you said it’s who you are.
Thank you for this great, advice-filled article. Regarding point number 4 (post at the right time), may I ask are there charts representing numbers of online users over an average 24-hour period, such as the one above, available for various regional time zones? Is the chart above based on a specific time zone or just general? I wish to reach people in Ireland and England. Thank you. Niall, Dublin
Fantastic blog! Thanks for sharing very interesting post, I appreciate to blogger for amazing post.
Facebook was originally created to be a social network where people could meet one another, make new friends, share common interests etc then along came using facebook for business and corporations and it turned into a marketing site geared to make money for people and since then you keep changing how the site is used, what can be shared, how its seen, when it gets seen. The top stories is always chosen even when you change it back to most recent stories it won’t stick. It also used to be real time so as soon as someone posted something you saw it, then you changed crap that no one asked for or wanted making it near impossible to see and get everything your friends post/share. It should be up to each individual to have a option to stop certain things or people from showing up on their own newsfeed. To me this includes apps, ads, real life/world news. If someone wants to see or hear anything in the news media they can choose that option. Not everyone is interested in worldly news if they were they’d watch it on television. I for instance only want to know what’s going on in my friends lives, what they are interested in, posts that are uplifting and encouraging, funny, moving, heartfelt, warm, family oriented things, online games/apps I play that my friends also are playing. Music videos. I’d also like the option to change my background/skin profile layout, colors etc. being able to create my own layouts then getting the code to use to paste on my profile which would make the layout. Like myspace used to and like tagged did and a few other sites I can’t recall right now because they are no longer available. Its a form of entertainment and a way to have a social life for those who have a hard time with social situations, relationships, anxiety etc in the real world. The online world became a very helpful tool for those who were lonely and had no one, no family, no friends and I think it should go back to being used that way. I don’t like others making decisions for me regarding what I see or how I choose to share things. The whole layout deal is a great way to express your artistic side, your originality even and it allowed people to learn a talent and create things that they would have never learned or knew how to do otherwise. At the very least it’d be nice to have the option to have things the way you want to, the way it works best for you and the option to use your never ending updated version of things but not to have it forced or mandatory.
Completely agree. Face Book was created as a Social Network where people could reach out and meet one another, make new friends, keep in touch with old friend, be involved in their daily lives. It was wonderful to reconnect with friends not business’s or corporations.
It was a Network of touching each other’s lives. Again Money is the root of all EVIL.
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Absolutely agree with these tips. It is so important to post at the right time and encourage users to interact. This will help in getting more attention for our posts in the newsfeed. I will be using these tactics when I start promoting my blog posts and guides in facebook ads.
These tips are not to be argued, they are accurately right. Your post is your selling point on the platform. Thanks for sharing these tips with us.