Facebook is a never-ending spiral of changes that can drive us all crazy. If you feel like only a small percentage of your followers are even seeing your posts, you’re probably right, and you’re not alone! And you’ll understand why soon. Here are some basic, strategic, and (for the time being) current tips I’ve picked up from social media managers to help increase post visibility and engagement…

• Linking Tips – The point of posting on Facebook is ultimately to drive visitors to your site. This can be difficult since Facebook actually penalizes your posts that include external links by making them less visible. Facebook doesn’t want visitors clicking on links that will lead them off Facebook. So… when you can, avoid using direct links to your blog or other external sites.

• Messages to Avoid – Avoid using the wording “click here” and “comment below.” Also avoid pushy, promotional, pitchy type language/messages. Also stay away from creating giveaways or contents.

• Quality Content – Facebook wants to see that your posts are relevant and have value for your audience. They determine that by measuring engagement by followers. The better the engagement, the more exposure Facebook will allow you. Inspiring, funny, interesting is good. Facebook prefers Videos (at least 3 minutes long), then Images, then Text, then [internal] Linking. The more likes, scrolls, comments, and clicking, your followers do, the more Facebook considers it worth being more visible.

• Post Times – Use the Page Insight Tools to determine the best time to post for your audience by seeing when they are most active. Facebook recommends posting once a day. Facebook also likes consistency of posts.

• Tag & Share – Regularly tag and share, because these will generate some engagement, which is ALWAYS a good thing on Facebook.

• New Feed Targeting  & Laser Targeting – These tools are too in depth for me to get into them here, but look them up and implement them to help you target the right audience.

• Ads (not Boosts) – One way, and the best way, to get away with being able to 1) increase exposure, 2) share direct links to your blog, and 3) have a giveaway or contest, is to create ads. The bottom line is that if you will pay for it, they will show it. In an ad, you can throw all the rules out the window to reach lots of people and interest them in leaving FB to visit your website and/or to subscribe to your email list. The good news is that the cost for an ad doesn’t have to be much. You can get a lot of exposure by spending $1 a day, especially since you get to set the parameters on your audience demographics. It is particularly affordable if you only use ads when you have important content you want to get more exposure.

• Coming Soon – For mobile news feeds, Facebook only shows the first three lines of text of your post, so you will need to become creative about capturing attention and making an impact.