Facebook

Those Facebook Follow Threads Could Be Killing Your Engagement

April 20, 2016 By Jen Kehl

Are Facebook follow threads a good idea?

In the blogging world, one of the big races is to get to x amount of followers. Round 1 is 500, round 2 is a 1000, and so on until you hit the ever elusive 100,000 or more!

Then it happens, you get to 1000 and you’re scratching your head. And frankly getting pretty ticked off at Facebook, and asking all of your blogger friends “How is it possible that Facebook only showed my post to 26 followers today?!”

I’ll tell you how it’s possible.

We all know Facebook is run by nasty little algorithms, and as much as we want to despise them, we have to like them too. After all, they are the reason we see posts from people we like in our feed, and not from that skeezy guy you dated for 5 minutes in college but didn’t want to hurt his feelings by ignoring his friend request.

Based on how you react to the news in your feed, Facebook judges what it thinks you want to see and what you don’t. And the more you interact by liking and commenting, the more Facebook understands your behavior.

So you see, you really want Facebook to use algorithms.

Unless of course it means Facebook is only showing your post to 1% of your page followers.

[bctt tweet=”You really want Facebook to use its algorithms. Unless it means only 1% of your followers see your content.” username=”jenkehl”]

Then you have to wonder what you are doing wrong.

Unfortunately something all of us bloggers do, could be the reason your posts aren’t getting out to people who genuinely want to see your content.

It’s called the Facebook follow?thread. It’s basically a like for like. And if you are trying to grow from 1 follower to 1000, chances are you are doing a lot of those.

You may be making a crucial mistake.

Facebook pushes your content out to readers based on the amount of your current followers engaging in your content. We see this number on our Facebook content as reach. Reach can be composed of actual page followers and friends of friends of followers.

Facebook determines engagement levels by showing your content to a small amount of your followers and seeing how they engage.

There is no way to know if Facebook is showing your post to actual followers (people who genuinely liked your page for its content) or people who just liked you in a Facebook follow thread.

Facebook is testing your followers’ authenticity.

If it?tests your content on non-engaged followers (people who don’t interact), it will deem your content un-interesting and therefore won’t show it to friends of friends, etc. This is your post that gets 1% reach.

Or, Facebook could happen to show your post to a decent amount of genuine followers, who engage and share, and that post has a reach of 34,765 when you only have 1000 followers!

This random sampling?is?why one post can see a ton of engagement and another can die, for no apparent reason. It’s all about the authenticity of your audience.

[bctt tweet=”Facebook’s random sampling of your followers could mean the difference between a post thriving or dying.” username=”jenkehl”]

You may love your blogging friends, and want to see them succeed, but if you are following them to help their numbers out, and not following to actively participate in their content, you may be hurting them more than you are helping.

The best possible thing you can do to increase your reach is to create engaging content that is true to your brand and share the heck out of it. If people like your content and choose to follow you, they become a genuine follower who can only increase your reach.

If you’re a blogger how can you help your fellow bloggers?

I won’t be doing anymore Facebook follow threads outside of my niche.

But I can tell you how you can help your blogging friends gain that reach.

Try a social share thread instead.?

A Facebook social share thread should include a link to a Facebook post you would like to see more engagement on. Your fellow bloggers should click thru to the post, then like it (or some other reaction), possibly leave a comment, and obviously the holy grail would be a share.

[bctt tweet=”Help out your fellow bloggers with a genuine Facebook share. A simple Facebook page like can hurt more than it can help.” username=”jenkehl”]

The only genuine way to grow exponentially is to build a following of genuine followers. Interesting, engaging content is the best way to make that happen!

Need some help with your social media strategy or reducing your bounce rate? How about some help?determining what you need and what you don’t, I am always available for a free consultation!

Facebook’s New Algorithms Aren’t Really Algorithms at All

February 15, 2016 By Jen Kehl

Facebook?s Big Announcement Last Week New?Algorithms?

We all know that Facebook’s top-secret algorithms effect who get’s to see our content on Facebook, and for bloggers and content marketer’s it is no small frustration.

Most of the time, we are convinced that Facebook won’t work for us, because we can’t unlock the great mystery.

And then Facebook up and changes their algorithm, just when you thought you might have a handle on it, ?and you are left wondering how that effects you.

Lucky for us, Facebook actually announced it’s change, publicly, and was kind enough to break it down for us.

What hasn’t changed?

What hasn’t changed is Facebook using its algorithms to make assumptions about what you?want to see in your news-feed based on engagement. (Likes, clicks, shares, and comments.)

What they are doing is giving the engaging behavior even more weight. And based on the behavior, it is deciding what to show you on the top of your news feed.

If a post, that is like other posts you have liked, seems to be like other posts you have liked, you are more likely to see it at the top of your feed. (wow, that’s a lot of likes!)

And if a post is getting a lot of engagement, Facebook is going to assume even more people want to see it, and push it out to more Facebook users. This is how your engagement numbers can be so much higher than your followers.

If you live up to Facebook’s expectations, you may?see your engagement go up. If you don’t get the clicks and like’s that Facebook assumes you will get, you may see your engagement go down.

What has changed? It’s not really an algorithm!

Facebook is using real users to determine what people really like. They are no longer assuming that just because you “liked” a post, you actually liked it.

They have enlisted over a thousand Facebook users to rate their experience on Facebook, and share what content they actually like and what they don’t like.

How many times have you clicked like because you wanted to be nice, but that you didn’t actually like like it?

On the flip side, how many times have you read something, enjoyed the content, but didn’t engage?

So Facebook is having actual users give their feedback about what they want to see and what they don’t. Instead of only little algorithm bots deciding the fate of your Facebook posts, real people are going to have a go!

Here’s why you shouldn’t care.

Facebook’s intention is not to crack down on bloggers trying to share genuine content, ?they want to cut-down on clickbait.

Facebook has?been actively cutting down on the use of click-bait. You know:
10 Things Entrepeneurs Must Know
Big Businesses Hate Him
What We Found Was Shocking!

However, people just got better at writing click-bait because it worked!

Facebook upped their game.

Now, Facebook is going to use the input of real people to help determine if people are being baited to click, or if there is genuinely valuable content coming from that page.
What does this mean for you?

If you create quality content, you are already winning.

Assuming you are already writing quality content, even without huge engagement, if you are posting content your followers actually like, you should see an increase in engagement.

More than ever, the new Facebook algorithms will benefit bloggers,?it’s time to do the happy dance!

via GIPHY

We are winning. And those who seek to manipulate you are losing.

What could be better? Now you can spend more time creating and sharing good content, and less time worrying about what Facebook is going to do about it.

Facebook said that most pages won’t see a drastic change, but?if your content is valuable, you may see an uptick. And let me tell you, one week later, I can tell you that I have seen a drastic change.

I have under 1000 followers, and this is my reach for this week. I didn’t even post on a trending topic.

Give them what they want!

I think I know what kind of content my readers want to see, and although I felt I was sharing that, I wasn’t seeing the numbers line up.

Since the change I have seen a drastic change, and have shared as much in Facebook groups. Many other Facebook page owners have mentioned seeing the same kind of statistics.

This is good stuff people!

[bctt tweet=”Facebook’s new changes?are a winner for bloggers! #SocialMedia “]

The Best Image Sizes for Social Media

January 25, 2016 By Jen Kehl

Bookmark this page!

You probably already know that social media is the best way to promote your site.

But did you know that each social network has a size it prefers for its images?

Of course they would never make it easy by making sizes universal, so you have to keep a cheat sheet, like I do, of all of the preferred sizes for each site.

You may also wonder how you can use different sized graphics for each post.

Here are some tricks.

Facebook and Twitter’s images are very close in size, so you could really use one for both.
You can use the Yoast plugin to upload a Facebook and or Twitter specific image.
If you have uploaded your Facebook and Twitter image to your Yoast,?in your post, you can choose the featured image as your Pinterest.

Use these tips and all of the relevant images for your blog post will be covered.

Here is a screen cast showing how to use?PicMonkey to create social media images.

As of January 2016, these are the preferred sizes. (Remember they do change!)

Facebook ? 1,200 x 628
Twitter ? 1,024 x 512
LinkedIn ? 800 x 800
Google+ ? 800 x 1,200
Pinterest ? 735 x 1,102
Instagram ? 1,080 x 1,080

Some Resources

Omnicore’s Social Media Cheatsheet
Visually’s Social Media Cheatsheet

I’d love to hear from you! Let me know what other tutorials you’d like to see!