So in the 1st part of the series (which you can read here), I explained how you can achieve a greater reach for your Facebook page posts by posting live updates.
In this 2nd part, I reveal how Facebook are now awarding greater reach to certain posts types… so you can do everything in your remit to get your page posts seen by more people.
Getting more reach in Facebook
There are 5 different types of updates that you could post from your Facebook page;
#1: Text; no link, no image
#2: Text; with link, no image
#3: Text; with link and image (it doesn’t make any difference to post reach whether an image post includes a link or not)
#4: Multiple images – with or without link or text
#5: Shared Facebook post (from someone else’s page)
#6: Shared Web page link (directly from the web page itself using sharing buttons)
Text; no link or image = LOW reach
A text post is what it says on the tin… a post that you’ve written in Facebook that consists of purely text… you haven’t uploaded an image or added a link
Text; with link, no image = LOW reach
Adding a link to a text post does not improve the reach… if anything it may decrease reach slightly
Text; with link and image/video = HIGH REACH
Uploading an image (using the upload image section of where you write your page posts – see image right) will 
increase the reach of that post. It makes no difference whether you add text or links to that post – the simple fact of including an image will improve your reach.
You see, Facebook interprets images as being interesting content, and rewards you for posting interesting content.
Multiple images – with or without link or text = HIGHER reach
When a single image equals interesting content in Facebook’s view, multiple images make for REALLY interesting content… and they reward you for sharing really interesting content by increasing your reach.
Clearly they ain’t old enough to remember the days of slides; and being invited around to friends’ houses to watch a slide show of their (uber boring!) holiday snaps or they’d have never reached that conclusion.
But they have, and don’t we love ’em for it?! Now you get to spend time searching for the right images to use too! Cue an abundance of new vacancies for “Facebook Page Posts Image Curators” for us non visual types 😉
Shared Facebook post (from someone else’s page) = LOWER REACH
They’ve decided that posts shared from other people’s pages are of no interest to your tribe, so you get ‘punished’ by achieving a lower reach for the shared post.
Although subsequentially you get rewarded by seeing more of that page’s posts in your newsfeed!
Confusing much?!
Shared web page link (directly from the web page itself using sharing buttons) = HIGHER reach
Sharing a web page in Facebook takes effort; you have to go to the web page (making sure you’re logged into Facebook as your business page) and click on a sharing button… then possibly write a l’il bit of text to go with it.
And because you’ve put so much effort into sharing that post, Facebook rewards you with greater reach. Cheers Zuck!
Does your brain hurt yet? They don’t make this Facebook marketing lark easy do they eh?!
To summarise, you’ll get the best reach with a Facebook page post that is posted live (not scheduled), directly within Facebook itself (not from a 3rd party app), and contains multiple images.
Of course, there is an easier way… you could invest in Facebook advertising and promote every post. That’s where their business model is ultimately going. But I would never recommend you run Facebook adverts without a strategy or you’ll be throwing money away… talk to me if I can help you create your advertising strategy before you invest a penny.
But here’s the thing… I tell my clients that all of these blog posts advising you to post this, post that, post now, post tomorrow – are only ever ADVICE – including this one.
The only FACTS you can trust are the stats from your Facebook page insights… those numbers tell you the reach of your posts with your audience… as well as which type of posts they prefer, and which times and days they are reading your updates.
So my advice to you this week is to test out posting all the different types of posts above, and test out posting live versus scheduling.
Then next week, spend 10 minutes analysing your own page insights and see what the impact was for the reach of your posts.
PS Embedding Facebook page posts in your website pages or blogs also increases the post reach. Discover how to embed posts in an earlier blog post here
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