No One Can See Your Facebook Posts!

So here’s what happened…

Earlier this week I read an excellent post from Social Times that stated “3% to 7.5% of Fans See Your Page’s Posts”.  I was shocked!!  I’m sure that was the reaction they intended!

I decided to test these numbers and made a post on my own Facebook page asking everyone who saw the post to either leave me a comment or “like” the post so I could get a feel for how many people actually saw it.  Guess what!  Only 3% of my Facebook fans engaged with that post!

This little experiment of mine turned out to be an incredible wake up call!  Only 3% of my fans were even seeing my posts!!  Oh sure, there may have been a few more who saw it and didn’t engage for some reason and others who simply weren’t on Facebook that day.  However, it’s  doubtful that the majority of my fans saw it and chose to do nothing.  That leaves me believing that the 3% – 7% number I saw could be entirely accurate!

The problem…

With over 700,000 active members, Facebook now plays an essential role in the marketing plan of every business owner.  Unfortunately  your marketing results on Facebook aren’t influenced by you alone.  Facebook actually determines who sees your messages!  Each person’s newsfeed only displays a certain category of posts from friends and pages.  In order to determine which of your fans see your posts, Facebook uses an algorithm referred to as Edgerank.  Every item you post is given a score and the posts with the highest scores have a much higher probability of showing up in the newsfeeds of your fans.

Three factors go into the Facebook Edgerank score:

1.  Affinity between the viewing user and the item creator – If you have a lot of engagement with your fans (i.e. sending them messages, liking their comments, viewing their profiles and basically taking an active interest in what they’re doing)  that improves the Edgerank of the item you are posting.

2. Weight – This is determined by the level of interaction with a post. Facebook considers that a comment is worth more than a like so any item that gets a lot of comments will have a higher Edgerank score.

3.  Time – The older a post is the less important it becomes

In addition, using automation tools to post on Facebook will practically guarantee a very low Edgerank score!

In Summary:  The higher a post’s Edgerank score, the more likely it is to appear in a user’s feed.  The problem is, “How do I get my Edgerank scores up?”

The plan…

It’s time to get in front of more people!  It’s time to get more people engaged!  It’s time to dig my heels in and truly get people connecting on my Facebook page!  Why should this be a business goal?  Because greater engagement means happier customers, increased referrals, more opportunities for strategic alliances and ultimately higher sales!

The first thing I did today was create a baseline.  I noted how many fans I have and I also went to EdgeRank Checker and got an idea of my own Edgerank Score.  I noted how much interaction has been taking place on my page and how many people have been sharing my content.

Now it’s time to begin working on a plan for increasing those numbers.  These are a few changes I’ve decided to make:

1.  I’m reviewing fans and reaching out to those who I feel could be a strong strategic alliance for my business.

2.  I’m testing out the number of posts I share per day.  Traditionally I’ve posted twice per day but I’ve noticed that many very active pages with a lot of engaged fans are posting quite a few times per day.  I’m going to increase my posts and see what happens.

3.  I’ll post manually to my page instead of using automation

4.  I’ll post a variety of quality and interesting items per day.  Video, photos, questions, polls and great information that encourages people to comment!

I think that’s a good start!  Let’s see what happens!

My mission…

Over the next 60 days I’ll be on a mission to increase my own EdgeRank scores and get a greater level of engagement on my Facebook page.  During that time I’ll be documenting what I’ve done, how I’ve done it and sharing the results with you here!

So here goes..

The challenge…

I challenge you to join me!  Start by liking my fan page at BizMSolutions Fan Page.  Leave a comment and tell me you’d like to be a part of my experiment.  Make sure you leave a link to your fan page as well.  Come back to my Facebook page, comment often and I’ll do the same for you!  Let’s find out how visible our posts suddenly become in each other’s newsfeeds!  Let’s find out how all of this affects our EdgeRank scores!  Let’s find out what happens to the engagement levels on each of our pages!

Are you up to the challenge?  Stop by my Facebook page and follow along with my little Edgerank experiment. We may both be surprised at the results!

[UPDATE] Here's what we found http://www.bizmsolutions.com/node/70