Is Facebook hiding your posts?

Back in June I debunked the #1 Facebook myth that was circulating on the social network.

Lately I’ve seen another one – a cut-and-pasted status update on many Facebook business pages, warning that their fans will not be able to see their content due to Facebook hiding their posts.

Here is what it says:

Facebook is hiding us from you! Do you like reading our posts? Do you like receiving our posts?

To keep seeing us, please comment regularly, just say YES in the comments for different posts. Or, in the future, if you are going to share – please say ‘Sharing’ – it may help to keep the posts in your newsfeed.

Facebook has changed its algorithms about who sees what posts. Since September 20th fewer posts (25% according to Ogilvy) show up on your newsfeeds. Even if you like a page there is no guarantee new posts will show up. Please comment, share and like. It will increase the chance of you receiving new posts.

Good news: It’s also a myth.

Bad news: It’s not entirely untrue. It’s just nothing new.

Breaking down this myth:

“Facebook is hiding us from you! Do you like reading our posts? Do you like receiving our posts?”

Facebook is not intentionally “hiding” posts from any pages. I’ve written about Edgerank before (Facebook’s algorithm that determines what gets seen in your news feed) and I’ve written about ways to conquer it to reach more of your fans.

“To keep seeing us, please comment regularly, just say YES in the comments for different posts.”

In theory this would be effective. If all the fans that saw a post wrote the “yes” in the comments, that would certainly fool Edgerank into thinking that the post is more important than it actually is. However, this is not genuine interaction, and I’m sure your page fans have better things to do than write “yes” on all of your posts.

“Or, in the future, if you are going to share – please say ‘Sharing’ – it may help to keep the posts in your newsfeed.”

Sharing content has the most weight of any single action on a Facebook post. You do not need to then write the word “Sharing” into the comments.

“Facebook has changed its algorithms about who sees what posts. Since September 20th fewer posts (25% according to Ogilvy) show up on your newsfeeds.”

The truth is that Facebook is always changing. It’s said that the social network is often tinkering with Edgerank and other algorithms on a weekly basis. Expect more changes, and expect to dedicate time and resources to go with the flow.

“Even if you like a page there is no guarantee new posts will show up.”

Facebook users are not on Facebook 24/7. Granted, Facebook claimed it’s one billionth monthly user this month, but that’s just monthly users. Every Facebook user does not log in every day (or even every week). Since Facebook users have an average of 130 friends, follow multiple business pages and do not spend every minute of every day on Facebook, any given post by a brand page is only seen by a small minority of their page’s fans. The accepted statistic, given by Gokul Rajaram, Facebook’s director of product management for ads, is that most posts are only seen by 15-20% of a page’s fans. That’s just reality.

“Please comment, share and like. It will increase the chance of you receiving new posts.”

This has always been true – and it’s something that page owners should be actively cultivating by creating engaging, interesting, relevant content.

KEY TAKEAWAY: The more that your fans engage with an individual page post – by liking it, commenting on it, and sharing it – the most likely it will stay at the top of news feeds and be seen by more people.

For ways to get more Facebook engagement, read my blog posts on the subject or Google “increase Facebook engagement”. Let me know what you find and how it goes!

Anything to add? Anything I missed? Leave your thoughts in the Comments section or on my Facebook Wall. Thanks for reading!  

photo credit: woodleywonderworks via photopin cc