A Very Short Guide to How to Get Your Content Seen on Facebook

A quick look at how to demystify the Facebook reach and ranking process, with simple tips for marketers to put into action with their content marketing.

Many fellow entrepreneurs, small local business owners, and marketers get a little befuddled by Facebook. Especially B2B folk, but not exclusively (as evidenced by my local yoga studio). Consequently, I thought it could be useful to provide a very simple understanding of how it works so your time and efforts don’t get wasted.

True: Getting your message seen on Facebook is getting harder and harder.

False: How to get seen on Facebook is a total mystery.

As my good friend and the smartest Facebook marketer I know, Emeric Ernoult, tells us in classes like “Facebook Marketing Myths and Tips,” there are a lot of changes to improve Facebook relevancy and yes, it’s harder but not a mystery. The basics are as follows:

Facebook is looking for related activity to your page, brand, and/or personal profile to determine what to show in the News Feed of folks that are your friends or followers. It’s that simple. Has this person recently had any interaction, activity, and most importantly engagement with you, your content on Facebook, or your page? Essentially, this how Facebook can tell if you are interested in this person or page and serve you content related to that interest.

In reverse order, Facebook gives strong signals to its content publishing in the News Feed to the big three actions you can take: “Like,” “Comment,” and “Share.” It’s indirectly the user’s way (your way if you are the user) to indicate how interesting that content or page is to you. So think of it as a sliding scale. Think of it in romantic terms.

1. Likes: The low end of the totem pole, but a good indicator of relevancy and shared interest. So getting a “like” will make it more likely (all pun intended) that you will be seen in this person’s page. Additionally, getting more likes overall on a given post will help it rise atop News Feeds everywhere.

It’s easy to “like” something, so the barrier is low for this action and Facebook knows this. We also “like” a lot of things in life, so it’s an endorsement but not a strong one. Think of it as someone saying: “I like Aaron.”

2. Comments: A big jump up from a “like.” It’s a super good indicator to Facebook that you really have a strong interest in this page/person’s content. You took the time to write and share your feelings and that is a big bump up on the Richter scale in importance. As you know, being a Facebook user, you can get 30, 40…100 likes, but for every 20 likes, you might get one or two comments. So this is a big deal. Romantic analogy: “I really dig Aaron and the great stories he shares about his world travels.”

3. Shares: The coup de grace of never-seen Facebook posts. Get some folks to share your stuff and end the suffering if you have a measly three likes and no comments. More poignantly, when someone shares your post, they are basically promoting it out to the world. Not only does that really kick in the fantastic viral butterfly effect of getting the word out to many new audiences, but it tells Facebook, this person really feels strongly about the value and relevance of this content. This is admittedly hard to get and even harder to ask for. Analogous to: “Aaron, wow! Love that guy. Not only is he a successful entrepreneur, but the whole spirituality aspect is amazing. Can’t get enough of him!”

So, here are the very simple and short recommendations to get your content seen:

  1. Posting to evoke an emotion so many will “like”
  2. Create a compelling question or statement on that post to get folks naturally “commenting”
  3. Make your content so awesome (aka use “Great Content Marketing Tactics“) that folks can’t help but want to be associated with this content and have all their friends benefit from it.

Easy enough, right? The hard part is actually spending the time to consistently do it. Good luck. And remember, share this post!

The end.

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