How Can I Raise my Business Profile on Facebook?
Updated: Mar 20
Back in the day (like... 2007!), it was the case that every time we posted on Facebook, all of our friends would see it, including every time we made a friend, every time we 'poked' someone, all our photos and interactions were notified to our followers.
However, due to the sheer volume of people now using the platform, this is no longer the case and we need to forget the mindset that we’re annoying everyone by regularly feeding things to our wall because half of our followers aren’t even seeing our posts.
In truth, an average of only 35% of our followers or friends on Facebook actually see each of the posts we create and this is due to the ‘algorithm’ that we hear so much about. If you google 'Facebook algorithm' you can work out how to try and pick this apart if you want to (and if you learn anything useful, please do let me know!) I basically prefer to just try and live by a few basic rules I’ve set myself when it comes to posting about my work on social media and these rules are based around being true to myself and growing a following organically (i.e. those people who follow me and engage with me do so because they have a genuine interest in what I do).
These ‘rules’ could be right, could be wrong but they seem to work for me so I’m sticking to them for now and I'm sharing them for your benefit also:
Consistency – if only 35% of viewers are seeing my posts, then it makes sense to post often to try to cover more ground. I do think there is a valid point about posting too much and turning people off, so I try to stick to once a day if I can. As well as posting regularly, I try and schedule my posts for a time when I know most of my followers are most active on the platform. Your insights page will tell you this so it’s worth checking.
Variety of Content – to try and address the concern about complacency amongst my audience, I try to vary the content I put out there to maintain interest: product photos, selfies, videos, shares from other pages, blogs, etc.
Attention grabbing – once a week I try to put out a post that really grabs people’s attention, whether that’s a video or a really beautiful photo that will encourage people to engage. The more people that engage with your post, the more people will see it and future posts you put out.
Share - Following on from this, if a particular post is gaining a fair bit of attention, then I will share it as that boosts it even more so I’ll share it to my own page or in a few groups.
Groups – in terms of what groups to share to, it’s useful to request membership to a few places where you think there will be interest in your work so for me it’s coastal groups, sea glass hunting groups, etc. But check the rules first to make sure you are allowed to advertise, the last thing you want is a ban. Then you can alternate which groups you share to so you keep things fresh.
Analyse – at the end of each month, check through which posts gained the most traction and try to work out why. Was it the time of day you posted, the content, the quality of the photo? You don’t need to spend ages on this, you will be able to find the information on your insights page. Whatever works for you, keep doing it. For me, it’s always the posts where you can see my face – much as I hate this because I don’t like putting myself out there, I have to accept it. It bugs me that people would rather see a photo of me than a photo of something I’ve made, but there’s a good reason for this which we can explore another time. For now, just know it’s the case and go with it. If you can bear to film yourself, then a video is even more engaging than a photo.
And finally, don’t beat yourself up if a post doesn’t get the engagement you expect it to, just chalk it up and move on. Sometimes you have to just accept that it wasn’t the right time for that information to be out there and get seen. Keep doing what you’re doing though, as long as you’ve got followers, you’ve got an audience who want to be kept updated on what you’re doing so share it and share it often enough to keep them interested.
Good luck and let me know if any of this was useful.