5 Mistakes You Didn’t Realize You’re Making on Facebook

ADRIENNE WOLTER | 28 JAN 16

 

With 1.59 billion users, Facebook is the most popular social network in the world. It is definitely a place you should be if you are trying to reach an audience.

However, popular as it is, Facebook is still a widely misunderstood social platform.

One of the most misunderstood features? The Facebook newsfeed.

The newsfeed debuted in 2006 to a user base that didn’t really understand it. Previously, the action had taken place directly on users’ profiles.

However, the newsfeed gave Facebook a central focus; a place for updates to reach the masses. This opened Facebook up as a marketing tool.

Now, there is too much stuff posted on Facebook every day to be shown to users in a chronological feed, so an algorithm determines what users do and do not see. You’re not just fighting with other businesses for airtime; you’re competing for a very limited space with a user’s friends’ posts and sponsored content.

You’re not just fighting with other businesses for airtime; you’re competing for a very limited space with a user’s friends’ posts and sponsored content.

The average user has 338 friends and likes 40 pages – that’s a lot of updates, which is why Facebook has to throttle the number of people who see every post.

Understanding Facebook Reach

The number of users who see your posts for free, just through you posting them on your page, is called organic reach.

Your reach is affected by a number of factors, including the size of your audience (how many people like your page), how much they engage with your posts, and exactly how they engage.

If you have an audience of people who heavily share your updates, you are going to see a much greater organic reach than a page with a similarly-sized audience that does not like to share your updates.

Average organic reach is really low – hovering around 2.6%. I know what you’re thinking – you mean to tell me that I’ve built up a fanbase of thousands of fans, and less than 3% of them are seeing my posts?! Well, yes and no.

You can see your exact reach by looking at some of the recent posts you’ve made on your Facebook page, and calculate your percentage by dividing the number of people who saw your post by your number of fans.

A recent (and fairly typical) post on my Facebook page reached 387 people:

 

If I divide that reach by my number of Facebook fans (currently, 2,642, though the number has gone up a little since this was posted), I get a reach of 14.6%. The post did get a little engagement (3 likes, and a number of clicks through to the article), which probably helped raise it beyond the average of 2.6%.

You know why the average reach is so low? The heart of it is that Facebook pages don’t make enough of an effort to make their posts engaging to the audience they have built. They’re probably making a number of the mistakes below.

But if you aren’t (or you stop making these mistakes, starting now), you too can reach a greater percentage of your audience. Keep reading to learn what not to do – and what you should be doing instead!

The heart of it is that Facebook pages don’t make enough of an effort to make their posts engaging to the audience they have built. They’re probably making a number of the mistakes below.

But if you aren’t (or you stop making these mistakes, starting now), you too can reach a greater percentage of your audience. Keep reading to learn what not to do – and what you should be doing instead!

Keep reading to learn what not to do – and what you should be doing instead!

1. Posting Overly-Promotional Updates

Your posts to your Facebook page are not ads – so don’t treat them that way.

So many pages seem to forget this, sending promotional message after promotional message. Buy our product! Subscribe to our newsletter! Visit our website! Buy our services! Sign up now!

Your audience is not a captive audience, at your disposal for advertising. Remember, your followers could un-like your page (or mute your updates) at any time.

The fact is, self-promotional material just isn’t very engaging or valuable to most users. Sometimes, this is difficult to feel out as a business; after all, people are liking your business, so they must be interested, right?

What to Do Instead:

As a general rule of thumb, the majority of your updates shouldn’t be about you – they should be about them. What can you post that is helpful, useful, inspiring, or amusing for your audience?

Bluehost is one example of a brand that does a great job balancing promotional posts with non-promotional ones. Here are three recent posts on their page:

They do a great job appealing to their audience of webmasters with jokes and funny videos while also sharing useful posts from their blog, sales, and specials.

2. Asking for Engagement / “Like-Baiting”

After understanding how reach works, it is tempting to grow your reach by asking for engagement. If I just ask my audience to like, comment, and share, you think to yourself, my engagement will go through the roof!

The thing is, you probably don’t see tons of posts in your newsfeed as a result of people sharing them because of a plea, and that’s because Facebook is onto this tactic. Asking for engagement, or “like-baiting” as some people call it, is a no-no if you are trying to expand your reach.

Facebook doesn’t want low-quality content to succeed through begging, so Facebook doesn’t want low-quality content to succeed through begging, so they actually throttle the reach of posts that do this.

This even applies when you are asking in an image (please, don’t do this):

The ship has sailed on this kind of thing working on Facebook.

What to Do Instead:

Instead of asking for engagement outright, drive people to engage by asking questions, sharing beautiful imagery, or by creating a curiosity gap.

 

Plated is one of those meal subscription box services, and their fans love engaging with their updates. They post each week’s menu, regularly put out a call for #platedpics, share inspirational and funny quotes, and give their fans access to useful how-to videos on their website.

 

They don’t need to ask for engagement – people will just start commenting, liking, and sharing all on their own.

3. Only Posting One Type of Update

Facebook gives you a number of options for posting content to your page. You can post a regular text update, an image or image gallery, links, and even native videos.

Despite what some people claim, there is no “best” type of update. Just look at the examples in this post! What you don’t want to do is post nothing but the same kind of post over and over again, whether that is links or text updates or even photos.

What to Do Instead:

Different people engage better with different types of content, so give them a variety.

Treehouse does a great job with this. Although their videos are the most eye-catching to me in my feed, I love the other kinds of inspirational content they share with their readers.

4. Growing a Disinterested Audience

You can get a lot of attention on Facebook by posting viral videos, but that doesn’t mean the new fans you got from posting them will be interested in your products or services.

That’s not to say that video updates are bad, but if they are the kind that can appeal to anyone, you’ll want to be careful when you use them. You can’t control who shares them, and the new fans you might earn as a result may have no interest at all in your business.

What to Do Instead:

Instead of heavily relying on viral videos for reaching a lot of your audience, grow your audience intentionally, appealing to the kind of people who are actually interested in your products or services.

Ask yourself:

• Who is my ideal Facebook fan?
• What problems do they have? (Solve them with your updates!)
• What do they find inspiring? (Inspire them!)
• What turns them off? (Avoid whatever that is!)

One of my favorite Etsy shops, Papio Press, does a great job sharing things their audience loves. They may not have the hugest following yet, but they consistently get dozens of likes as well as other types of engagement on their updates.

 

5. Buying Likes

I know, it’s hard when you’re starting out, and for a while after – it feels like every other Facebook page has more likes! It’s so tempting to head over to Fiverr, to look up a gig offering up 500 new Facebook fans, to drop $5 on some instant gratification…

Stop right there! As much as the sellers try to assure you otherwise, by their very nature purchased Facebook likes are fake. Bought likes are fake people, so you are wasting your reach on people who don’t even exist!

Sure, they inflate your like count, but at what cost? Now even less of your real fanbase is going to see your updates in their newsfeed.

What to Do Instead:

It’s very simple – don’t buy likes!

That isn’t to say, however, that it is bad to use targeted Facebook ads to get your updates in front of people who are interested but haven’t discovered you yet. Those are real people, and those ads are a much better use of your money than Fiverr gigs.

Wrapping Up

On Facebook, reach is everything. If you don’t post engaging updates, it doesn’t matter how many fans you have – with no engagement, the algorithm won’t spread your updates to your fans.

That’s why it’s so important to build your audience carefully, with people who are genuinely interested in what you have to say.

To wrap things up, here are the five Facebook mistakes you might be making, and what to do instead:

• Don’t be all promotion, all the time.
• Do post updates that are about your audience, not you.
• Don’t ask for engagement.
• Do drive engagement with questions, humor, and inspiration.
• Don’t only ever post one kind of update.
• Do post a healthy mix of text, image, link, and video updates.
• Don’t rapidly grow a disinterested audience with content that isn’t true to your brand.
• Do slowly and steadily grow your audience by staying true to your brand.
• Don’t buy fake likes!
• Do grow your audience with well-targeted Facebook ads.