How social tools are hurting your reach on Facebook

[Disclosure: VentureBeat has a contract with Erin Ryan via Hasai for social media work.]

Many businesses are looking below their shared articles and wondering why their “reach” (now called “people who saw this”) is so low on their Facebook page when a decent number of people have “liked” their page.

First and foremost, if you’re using any kind of tool to inflate the number of “likes” you get on Facebook, you should reconsider. Social signals — the actions taken on various social sites — are becoming more relevant in search. So social networking activities need to be natural, even if that means your numbers decrease.

With that said, let’s take a look at what “people who saw this” means under a post on Facebook. You can easily see yours by hovering over it with your mouse. I’ll tell you why you should increase it and how.

What does “People who saw this” post mean?

Facebook determines the popularity of a post on your Facebook page in two ways:

1. Organic – The number of people who saw your post on your newsfeed, in their ticker, or on the wall of your Facebook Page.

2. Viral — The number of people who saw your Page’s story from a friend, in other words creating an action such as a “like”, comment, or share.

Facebook calculates the popularity of each post using a variety of factors. In this case, “natural posts” tend to have a higher reach.

What is a Natural Facebook Post?
A natural Facebook post is defined as doing anything via Facebook without the use of outside tools or services that don’t require you to interact with Facebook directly. Tools also generally allow you to spend less time on Facebook, and they are  a contributing factor for why your reach (aka “people who saw this”) is lower.

Example: Let’s say you have a page that has a little over 400 organic “likes,” but only 19 people saw the post. That may leave you scratching your head.

If you look over the details of this particular post, you’ll see that a tool was used. In this example, the tool used is “Buffer,” an app that lets you schedule posts to go out on various social networks (kind of like Hootsuite). It’s handy, but how useful is it if it’s decreasing the number of people who actually see those scheduled posts?

Upon further investigation, you may notice that the number of “people who saw this” is different when comparing posts that were made using tools and posts that you shared manually to Facebook. The posts that were manually added to Facebook have a higher number of “people who saw this.”

How to gain more exposure on a Facebook Page in 4 easy steps
If you want to increase the reach of your Facebook posts, you need to use Facebook naturally. That means reducing the usage of tools that manage your Facebook page.  Additionally, you’ll have to start spending more time on Facebook manually posting things.

Here are four easy ways you can increase your chances of being seen more on Facebook.

1. Ask a question using Facebook’s question feature
2. Upload a photo
3. Upload a video directly to Facebook
4. Prior to sharing a link, upload the associated photo first and then add the link along with the title (make sure the chosen photo is “likeable” or “catchy”).

Like everything on the Internet, Facebook uses an algorithm to place updates within your news feed, which is based on what you “like”, who you “like,” your interests, and how you share. This placement process is called EdgeRank, and it will determine how many people will see your activity on Facebook.

So to recap, If you want better exposure of your activity on Facebook, you need to spend more time manually posting on Facebook. Literally, just use Facebook more!

Share Button with Internet Hand image via Crystal Eye Studio/Shutterstock

Erin Ryan is a Social Media Promotional Director for the Social Media Firm Hasai Inc. Erin is an avid writer for various Social Media and Tech Blogs and is Editor of the Social Media Guide, Socialeyezer.