How to Hack the Facebook Algorithm

Welcome to a time where your social media profiles & websites are more important to build up trust with customers than ever.

You are maybe one of the lucky ones and call yourself a business owner. You are technical experienced and know how important it is to share your news, information & details with potential customers and clients on social media. Of course you do want to have a large number of views and engagement, re-shares and secretly always hope that customers will find you by seeing your products or services online.

Unfortunately, that might be easy for well-known companies. For example companies like Nike, Adidas, Apple, Sport Teams or Celebrities. With their natural fan base their organic growth is a key factor for their success. As a small business owner or entrepreneur organic growth and reach is very important, but not as easy. It means hours of work, creativity and designing of interesting graphics and videos. Of course social media is always the first thing people think about, a cheap, easy way to gain awareness. Right?

Well, not so fast. There are many different platforms you can use to promote your company. LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook are just some of the most visited ones. Each of them has advantages, but also difficulties.

Let's focus on the biggest one - Facebook.

So, you have started your business page years ago, you have been able to built up a strong customer base, but you started noticing that less people are actually seeing your posts and updates. Right away you shift the blame to someone else. Anther company which is copying your style, more competitors which have created more content on Facebook or someone accidentally changed you postings. Unfortunately you are Wrong!

The reason is the "new" Facebook Algorithm. Facebook constantly changes things, sometimes they are forced to do so because of new privacy policies, other times they just do it to increase their own revenue. How? These changes, mostly in the Facebook algorithm, have a high impact on everyone's Facebook page. As a result, many business take the easy route and instead of adopting the new guidleines they just start to invest mor emoney into their ads on Facebook - a fast way to keep the numbers up.

But there is other ways, without blowing up your budget. To explain how to "hack" these algorithm changes you can follow some steps & tips. Once you made your changes you will start noticing an increase of views and engagement on your business page.

So let's jump right into it!

First of all, don't forget that Facebook is a business just like other companies. Just because Facebook is a social media platform does not mean that their first goal is different than any other companies goal: Creating Profit. Therefore Facebook wants to keep traffic and users on their own platform(s).

Facebook can sell more advertising to higher prices by having a high amount of active users on their social media platform.

Like mentioned before Facebook has a very complicated algorithm that determines where your posts shows up, which other users will be able to see it and also how they can see it. There are many ideas from marketers and advertising agencies to increase the likeability to have your posting shown more often. Here is a list of some tips & tricks which have worked pretty well:

• Don't include links that drive traffic to other website or social media platforms (unless they are owned by Facebook, for example Instagram)
• Don't use links to your won website, instead link back to your business profile
• Create an amazing business profile to help customers to find all information and details about your services on Facebook , without having to visit your website
• Upload images directly to Facebook, don't just link them to your post from external sources
• Avoid using to much text in images
• Don't use too many #'s. Recent trends have shown that people barely look at them. Generally their usage has gone done, at least on Facebook. But, they can harm you by making your posts look cluttered and giving you a needy impression.
• Keep in mind that only 10% of your followers can see the posts you publish. Therefore post in groups. Unlike your posts on your timeline everybody in groups will be able to see your posts.
• Get your published posts back in the timeline by liking it after a day or two. This helps to show it to friends, customers or followers who might have not seen it before.
• Make sure you always reply to any comments on your page. No matter if negative or positive.
• Never delete negative comments. Respond to them and solve the problem so you build up credibility instead of covering up potential problems.
• Upload video to inform followers about current events, updates or relevant information. Always include under-titles if there is important information, so users without sounds can at least read it.
• Spend a small amount of money to boost your posts. The Facebook algorithm will notice that you are a customer Facebook benefits from. As a result your regular publications will be shown to more than just the regular 10% of people in your list.
• Do you have any old posts which are still important? Go back on your timeline and like them, or write a comment underneath. That will bring them back up on everyone's timeline.

KISS - Keep It Simple Stupid.

Facebook Users want to be entertained, informed and don't spend a lot of time reading and watching your posts.

Keep your updates short, get to the point and be creative and entertaining with an easy to understand message.

You will soon notice an increase of views on all your future posts.

by Rob Reinert