Did you know that your Facebook feed is tailored for you? 

Sound a little like Black Mirror? Yeah. We aren’t joking. That might be why your friend might say ‘Did you see my post on Facebook the other day…?’ and you feel bad because you missed it. 

You can’t change Facebook’s built-in algorithm…but you can outsmart it!

Let’s look at it from Facebook’s point of view for a second. Over the past 10 years, viewership of content has increased at the same rate as the amount of content. In short there are way more people on Facebook than there used to be… so inevitably there is way more stuff on Facebook.  

Facebook decides what you want to see, comment on, share, click on and spend time engaging with. They call this ‘engagement’. This works for them because the more you stay on Facebook, the more revenue they can make off advertising. 

Why not take a moment to open your newsfeed and take a look at what comes up in your feed keeping this in mind. 

So how does the algorithm work??

Facebook doesn’t want you to be able to crack their algorithm – that’s why it’s not a very straightforward process. FB creates a personalised relevancy score which is different for each person who visits the site.  

If you have engaged with a creator in the past (i.e. clicked on, liked, slowed down to read, been tagged by or been tagged together in a post) then FB realises that they are more important to you than other FB friends. 

Another thing to keep in mind is that if others engage quickly with a post, chances are you will see it too. I.e. popular posts rate well on the feed. 

It also depends what type of post it is. Some people will see more short videos of cute animals in their News Feeds whilst others will see statuses with colour backgrounds way more. The more you engage with a specific type of post, the more it will show up in your feed. 

So the lesson here is, if you engage with videos, you’re shown videos. You engage with photos, you’re shown photos. You engage with content from another app, that’s what you’ll see.
You should also be keeping in mind when it was posted. The more recent a post is, the greater chances you will see it. If you haven’t logged in for a while then FB will show you golden moments from the time you were away from the website so you don’t miss out on the good stuff.  

Oh and also if 15 people share the same post it will appear higher in your news feed. That’s that popular posts rank well thing popping up again. 

Lastly, FB is a selfish beast. FB live videos are 4x more likely to appear in the feed which is why we implore you to give it a go from your stations FB pages! 

What about Facebook Ads – have they got anything to do with this?

 As you know, FB lets you pay to ‘Boost’ your posts. It’s actually a good idea to test it out as you can target who sees the post and from what areas etc. 

All in all…

There is no ‘right way’ to get your content seen by your FB audience. We have boiled it down to these points for you thought to try make it easier when curating your FB content:

1. Share inbound content:

Share from other peoples walls, other FB pages instead of from outbound websites. This makes FB happy. 

2. Stay on the face of the earth – engage with your community. 

The less you engage, the less you will be shown and the less people will engage back with you. Stay positive and keep pressing that like button! 

3. Change your settings to view ‘most recent’ rather than ‘top stories’

That way you will see posts as they appear rather than what is most popular. 

Take a look at Dane B. McFadden’s wall for some promotional inspiration. He tricks Facebook into thinking he’s posting original content. First, he summarises the article in his own words, then uploads a picture (so FB thinks it’s his original pic), and finally adds the link.

Resources:

Read updates to Facebook’s algorithm. 

A guide to the news feed.