Quantity does not always mean quality. The changes in Facebook algorithm have generated a lot of complaints. Understand! Currently, many companies are obliged to produce tons of content to keep their audience engaged on social media.
On the other hand, what is expected with the massive publication of content is that engagement and interaction accompany this flow. But that’s not exactly what’s been happening on Facebook lately. With the changes in the algorithm, the most used social network platform in the world started to filter which posts should be displayed, dividing the reach of publications.
Facebook Data: How Posting Less Increased Our Reach, Engagement, And Impact
Posts Per Day
For most of the past year (January-October 2016), we posted a lot on social media, especially Facebook. Our data shows that we share over 125 posts on our social media (25-40 posts on Facebook alone) weekly.
Reach
Part of our thinking was that we could simply adapt to the ever-changing social media algorithms by posting more. That makes sense, right? Theoretically, the more we publish, our reach would increase over a week, month, or even year.
However, watch what starts happening in October 2016. Our Facebook reach starts to increase while we begin to apply our Facebook posting strategy. Not only that, but the space continues to grow as we head into 2017 and beyond.
Why We Stopped Posting Everything on Facebook
Not Every Post Is For Facebook
Many social media managers know that it is a considerable challenge to post quality content on Facebook every week. The creation process, the writing and scheduling, the follow-up, the engagement with your followers – the list goes on.
However, we found that the opposite is true with engagement and outreach. When trying to fill the timeline with content for the simple desire to publish and have a presence on Facebook, the content tends to become diluted and lost in the news feed.
For us, publishing less didn’t seem like a viable option at the time. We have a ton of great content coming out on the Blog every week – should we stop posting this together? And that’s where we discovered a fundamental key point in our Facebook publishing strategy: while our content may be quality (and unique), not all posts are Facebook-friendly.
Our Current Facebook Posting Strategy
The significant shift in our strategy started with the counterintuitive realization that: “While our content may be quality (and amazing), not all posts are suitable for Facebook.” This was quite difficult as I wanted to share all the great stuff our team wrote on our blogs. It all deserved to be shared with our community, but it was becoming clear that it was affecting our content.
The best posts of all tend to have a mix of entertainment and education, and these are the ones I’m constantly looking for on social media. Finding and sharing content is our global strategy, which helps clarify everything that should be posted in the following Facebook posting strategies:
Maximum Of One Or Two Posts Per Day
I believe we are seeing such a dramatic increase in reach and engagement because we only publish one or two posts a day on Facebook.
This serves two practical purposes:
- This forces us to share only the best of the best content because we have limited space;
- This allows Facebook’s algorithm to focus on delivering one content (vs multiples) to our audience;
I recommend that you try only to post once or twice a day on Facebook. You might be surprised at how quickly your best content will filter to the top. Limiting the number of posts encourages a deep focus on quality posts, which sends positive signals to the Facebook algorithm.
Content Curation
Another great strategy has been to publish more curated content on our Facebook page. Previously, we used to avoid curating content because it didn’t directly affect the goals: traffic, subscriptions, sales, etc.
We Are Focusing On Brand Awareness And Engagement
Focusing on brand awareness and engagement versus bringing traffic to the site has become a standard task in our strategies.
We have witnessed changes in many social networks over the past year. We used to see brands and companies posting links from their blog posts, and traffic flowed straight to their pages. This is still the case for many positions; savvy marketers can benefit from the idea of their overall content strategy – focusing on direct traffic and engagement.
Also Read: Social Media Selling And Its Role In Lead Generation