In case you haven’t noticed, not everyone is seeing your church’s Facebook posts. By “everyone”, I’m referring to people who’ve liked your church’s Facebook page. Despite all your marketing efforts to get church members to “like” your page, there’s still plenty of content that you’re posting to Facebook that they’ll never see. Kind of depressing isn’t it?
While there’s no official number out there, it’s believed that only 16% percent of the people who “like” your page will actually see your content in their news feed. That number will grow as people like and share your content. However, that seems like a lot of work for only 16% and hoping that the rest of your audience somehow sees your content.
So what’s the solution to getting through to your Facebook audience? Well, you can pay to promote your content and increase it’s reach. Pay for Facebook? Yes, I know that sounds crazy, but that’s what happens when companies become publicly traded and answer to stockholders.
Don’t worry though, there’s a better way to get your content to your audience without spending money. Below you’ll find three effective ways you can break through Facebook’s 16% barrier and get your content in front of your audience.
Upload vs Linking
Let’s say you have a two minute video clip of your Pastor from last Sunday’s sermon. The easiest thing to do would be to upload it to Youtube and use IFTTT to cross post the clip to your social media platforms. While that’ll work, you’ll find that videos that live outside of the Facebook ecosystem (Youtube, Vimeo, etc…) often don’t get the same ranking on news feeds as videos that were uploaded directly to Facebook.
So what’s the solution? Simply upload your clips directly to Facebook. I’ve found that Facebook gives videos that are uploaded directly to their platform a higher ranking in news feeds. Why does this work? Well, here’s the secret: Facebook wants your content to live on their platform. Keep that in mind whenever you’re posting content.
Try Long Status Updates
When we were trying to generate more traffic to our pastor’s blog we found little success with posting a link to each blog post as a status update. As I said before, Facebook wants your content to live on their platform.
So what was our solution? We posted the entire blog post as a status update. That means we cut and pasted a 500 word blog post and used it as his status update. The results? Our organic reach skyrocketed overnight and we generated more likes for his page.
At first we struggled with this, since this meant that we’re not driving people to his site, however we now understand that once people are logged into Facebook, they are less likely to leave the Facebook website to experience outside content.
Remove Outside Links
Again this may seem counterintutive, but the less you try to get people to leave Facebook to visit your site, the more news feeds you will reach. So instead of adding links to events or webpages in your posts, try posting an image with the url clearly written on it. Yes, this may seem like more work for the reader, however the increased news feed reach will outweigh the additional work.
Don’t Be Afraid to Ask
It never hurts to add “Please Share” or “Please Like” on certain posts that you send out. By giving people call to actions people will actually share your content. Now keep in mind that while this technique will work, it shouldn’t be abused. Make sure you are selective when asking people to take action on your content. Don’t wear out your audience.
A Challenge
Here’s a challenge for my readers. I want you for one week to try the above methods with your church’s Facebook content and compare the results. See if your content gains more readers and in turn generates more likes. Let me know your results by contacting me here.