How to Beat Facebook’s Algorithm
You probably already know that Facebook has changed their algorithm again, leaving many searching for methods on how to beat Facebook’s algorithm.
The changes are a result of research conducted by Facebook that found that their users prefer interacting with other users (friends and family) over business pages. This is why their algorithm was modified to give posts from people (personal profiles) preference over posts from business pages in the newsfeed.
This has made everyone insecure and the terms ‘Facebook Armageddon’ and ‘Facebook Zero’ have been floating around since the change.
I have already witnessed the effects of this algorithm. Whenever I visit my newsfeed, instead of seeing more posts from pages, I see more posts from people (personal profiles).
This will definitely cause a decrease in reach for Facebook business pages and less exposure to your posts. But fear not, I’m going to share several techniques on how to beat Facebook’s algorithm and get more traffic and shares. Here are some of them. I have also included some tips to get traffic from other sources so that you don’t have to put all your eggs in one basket.
Build up your personal profile on Facebook
As aforementioned, posts made on profiles are going to get more exposure than posts made on pages. So, from now onwards your Facebook strategy should mainly revolve around your profiles. You should work on increasing the number of friends and followers your profile has.
You can have up to 5,000 friends on Facebook. Browse through Facebook and add all the people you know as friends. Also add follow buttons linking to your Facebook profile on your website. And of course, regularly share interesting content, including your blog posts. If you share quality content daily, people will want to be your friend or follow you. You will attract the right type of followers too.
Michael Stelzner is an example of someone who has done a great job building a quality Facebook profile. Michael has over 10,000 followers and regularly shares content which helps him drive engagement and improve his presence.
Therefore, from today onwards instead of just promoting your Facebook page, promote your personal profile as well. The more friends and followers you have, the more traffic you will be able to send to your website when you share content.
Also invest some time into other forms of Facebook marketing methods like groups and messenger chats. You can join several groups in your niche or set up one of your own and begin contributing and building your network. To leverage Facebook Messenger, you can use a tool like Mobile Monkey. Using these two techniques will help you reach more people than traditional page marketing methods.
Another tactic that is working great at the moment is live video.
Create better content that’s specific for Facebook
If you want more people to share your content, you must make sure it is of the best quality.
A recent study by Buzzsumo found that the number of social media shares articles are getting has decreased for publications like Upworthy and Buzzfeed. But it has gone up for the New York Times.
This is because they publish a lot of long posts. Newswhip found that the average length of a New York Times article is over 2,000 words.
One of these long form posts was over 10,000 words and got over 47,000 Facebook interactions.
This coincides with another study from Buzzsumo which found that as the length of the article goes up, so does the number of overall social media shares and Facebook shares.
So, from now onwards you should write longer more informative posts.
Another benefit of writing longer posts is that they appear higher in search engine results.
Brian Dean of Backlinko found that posts that appeared first in Google search results had an average word count of 1,890.
To ensure you get maximum traffic from your posts, use a good keyword research tool to find keywords with high search volume to optimize your posts. A free one you can use is Ubersuggest. Unlike the keyword planner, there’s no need to sign up to use it.
It shows you the search volume of the keyword and the difficulty to rank for the keyword, to make it easy for you to pick the right ones.
For a detailed guide on how to write SEO optimized posts checkout this post.
Optimize for sharing
After you and your employees share your post, you want the people who visit your blog/website from these shares to also share your blog post to drive even more traffic. To get them to do this you should optimize your blog for sharing.
A simple step that can help increase shares is adding share buttons as a study by BrightEdge found that pages with share buttons get nearly 7 times more shares than those without.
These share buttons should include simple ones that appear on the top and the bottom of the post and image buttons and more sophisticated bribe share buttons. For best results limit the option to share to a few networks only.
Another way to get more people to share your content onto their profiles is by adding a call to action at the end of the posts. Here instead of asking people to share the post on Facebook pages, ask them to share to their profile, you can add messages like, ‘Share it with your friends and followers’.
Invest in other social networks that drive traffic too
Of course, Facebook isn’t the only social network you should invest your time in. There are several other alternative networks that can drive a lot of shares and traffic. Here are a couple of them…
Facebook, might refer the highest social traffic, but Pinterest comes second beating a lot of other popular social networks.
This is why you should spend some time to optimize your content for Pinterest.
The first step to optimizing your content for Pinterest is to add images to your content as people can only pin a page if an image that is at least 100 X 200 pixels is present. But for best results Pinterest recommends the dimensions 600 X 900 pixels.
Next add a Pin It/Save button that automatically pins your Pinterest optimized image. You can create this button and add the URL to the image here.
After that promote it on Pinterest by sharing the post on your boards and on group boards.
LinkedIn told Digiday that likes, comments and shares on the network have increased by 60% and Parsely found that mobile referral traffic from LinkedIn has more than doubled. Therefore, optimizing your content to get more LinkedIn shares and traffic should be a compulsory step.
You can do this by adding LinkedIn share buttons and promoting the posts on your profiles, pages and in groups. Conducting outreach and asking influencers to share your content will also help.
Recap on how to beat Facebook’s algorithm and get more shares & traffic
These are all the techniques you can use to get more shares and traffic and take back control instead of being held hostage by Facebook’s constant changes to their algorithm.
Start off by improving your Facebook profile and begin sharing your content there. Next, run an outreach strategy that gets people to share your existing content. Then begin creating more shareworthy content and optimize it for sharing.
This will increase your Facebook traffic and even your search engine traffic if you use the right keywords in the right places.
Finally don’t forget to add in other networks like Pinterest and LinkedIn to the mix as they can drive traffic too.
The best method on how to beat Facebook’s algorithm is to become less vulnerable to their changes.
And if you found this article helpful, please share it on your favorite social network now.
Mitt Ray is the founder of Social Marketing Writing, where you can download 100 free social media background images.
