HOW TO FIND MORE STORIES & NEWS TO SHARE ON FACEBOOK
Do you struggle with finding interesting content for your Facebook page? This is the NUMBER ONE issue my clients are having with their Facebook content strategies.
It’s hard (not to mention time consuming) trying to find interesting content to write each day but it’s proving even more difficult to find the right content to share that is relevant to their fans.
The Facebook News Feed is placed on the center of the home page for a good reason: to highlight what your friends are doing –especially the links they share.
News links increase the relevance of the post and the more links are shared – the better as far as Facebook is concerned.
As a matter of fact, more people are now tuning in to Facebook for stories about things they care about; from live news coverage, to Miss Universe, to sports scores, to the latest meme images and inspirational quotes.
It was reported in October that Facebook’s average referral traffic to media sites has increased over 170%, which was 3x more than the previous year. Facebook has enhanced the newsfeed with more controls and the #hashtag to help you keep track of the topics that matter and are relevant to your page.
Facebook is using an algorithm (known to some as Edge Rank) to determine which stories matter, which includes the number of likes, comments, who posted it as well as the type of post (whether it is a photo, video, or a status update). It enables people to discuss and share what’s happening. With the algorithm, Facebook focuses more on what makes high-quality content, particularly when it comes to mobile.
But why does Facebook need to sort out stories and why do they determine which stories get “bumped” in your newsfeed? Why don’t they just serve up everything to our newsfeed? It is because of relevance. They want to give people a better user experience by just showing what people want to see. In the near future, the News Feed will be able to determine the difference between high-quality articles from any mediocre content hosted outside Facebook. This means that the News Feed will give more prominence for valuable news related links and articles over other types of content.
How to find stories to share for your Facebook Business Page?
- Log-in to your Facebook account and switch As Your Page
- Like and follow as many people/page relevant to your niche. Include reputable news and media sites.
- While posting as the page admin, click on Home. There you will see what companies, brands and the people you follow are talking about.
- Select the stories you want to share. You can share it at that time, or better yet, pre-schedule to post at a later date (this helps you get more posts ready for later!)
Facebook just launched – Similar To – which is a simple feature that appears under a post on your page.
To make the News Feed more suitable to people’s interests, Facebook is now suggesting articles or posts that are “similar.” Once you click on the post, about three more articles similar to what you have read will show up beneath the post feed. This will help you discover more content you may find interesting and shareable on your own Facebook Page timeline. You will never have to miss out on the topics you care about.
See it in action here:
The key to all of this is to know that Facebook’s research shows that people prefer links to quality articles or news vs. just an image or meme and they will start showing more of this type of content in people’s newsfeeds so take note and start created AND sharing this type of content.
You should see an increase in your reach of your fan page if you start following these rules.
I’d love to hear in the comments below this post if you guys have seen a drop in your reach with these recent changes.