How to Get More Out of Your Facebook Posts

"Why doesn't anyone see my Facebook posts?" 

I get this question a lot from clients, non-clients, friends, Romans, etc. And I understand why. You write a post telling people what is so great about your business, what you've been up to, something that really matters to you.

You do this because want to create a post  that inspire engagement, that connects with your audience and help them remember you, right? Posts that make them love you, trust you, remember you, CHOOSE YOU!? Any then no one even looks at it???

Frustrating.

When I managed the Facebook page of a nonprofit online resource with a following of about 250,000 fans, I thought about how to get people to look at our posts a lot.

We actually higher than average "engagement" (likes, comments, shares, and clicks on our posts). But I was always looking over my shoulder at the specter of the Facebook Algorithm. 

Via http://postplanner.com--The Facebook algorithm looks JUST like this. For sure. 

It looks like this, right? In all seriousness though, we know that Facebook curates every single user's feed. It's the reason most people's Facebook posts (whether they be personal or business page posts) don't get seen by all of their friends and fans. 

Another thing we learned while I worked on that awesome site's social media:

This chart is basically saying that if you post something your page, the likelihood that your audience will see it ... has fallen off a cliff. 

Facebook decides what each of its users sees, and it's pretty mum about the exact combination of factors it uses to make those individual decisions. 

But there are still plenty of business pages that get PLENTY of engagement. So, we must know some things. Right?

• Use beautiful photos to get noticed. 

• Or don't. 

• Write short posts! The shorter the better.

• Or ... don't. 

• Post links to your website.

• Or ... you get the idea. 

Here's my point: there isn't one specific format for getting your Facebook posts seen by an audience who might really care about what you have to say. 

What does your audience care about? What matters to them? Or, if you want to think about it like this: 

“How does the thing that matters to you HELP them?”

What does your message do for them? What does it mean to them?

And this is where studying what others have done can be really helpful and important. 

In fact, studying what other people do is the best way to make a list of what to test on your own Facebook page and other social media profiles. 

So, here I've dissected a couple of Facebook posts. One that got a lot of clicks to the owner's website (which you can view here once you sign up for my list), and one that got a lot of comments on Facebook itself (which you can view here). 

They are both great examples because they garnered lots and lots of engagement--higher than average for the profiles they came from, and higher than average across the entire social media landscape. 

They are also great examples because they served a purpose for the business owners who posted them. 

And they are great examples because they use completely different tactics. But I break down why they worked. 

Test out these tactics for yourself! Let me know how it goes.