Have you ever posted something on Facebook and no one looked at it? Or perhaps you can see that a lot of people looked at it and deliberately decided they didn’t like it and didn’t want to comment? If you’re guilty of having lonely little posts that are unloved by Facebook “friends” then this guide will help.

Get your work out there in the world where it belongs! Although it seems you might only have a small network of people connected to you on Facebook, there are many thousands more that you could connect with and lots of them are interested in what you have to say. You just have to find the right places to publish it.

10 Reasons Why People You Know Won’t “Like” Your Post

It’s boring.

They’re too busy.

They never like anything.

It’s not a topic which appeals.

They’re fussy about liking.

They’re logged out all the time.

You don’t have many friends.

You posted it at 4am and no one saw it.

What you are offering is useless to them.

You’re marketing too hard or too often and they think it’s spam.

Posting to Your Existing Facebook Friends

Consider the fact that the Facebook friends you know can be very fussy people. They might be a combination of real-life friends, family and online mates. Not everyone comments or likes as much as some of us, hence even if you were to post the most compelling content in the world, some of them probably still wouldn’t part with a measly “like” because they’re just not that sort of person.

Another reason could be that Facebook friends hate being marketed at, even when you think it is a subtle thing. Or the topic is not something they’re interested in.

Alternatively, maybe you aren’t liking and commenting on their posts enough, or maybe they’re one of those Facebook friend superstars, with 30 status updates a day, 500 friends and not enough time to pay attention to you.

Whatever the reason, posting links to your Facebook circle is probably not going to result in viral hits unless you are a bit of a superstar yourself or posting amazing stuff (in which case you probably wouldn’t need to read this anyway).

One thing you can do to improve your standing within your Facebook network is to intersperse posts about your content with funny jokes, status updates and fantastic stuff that you can share from other people. I know a mother who does this really well—she posts lots of witty stuff about her kids during the day and I like reading her status updates so much that when she posted about having an Etsy shop, I was keen to check it out because she was so entertaining to me.

Post your own content to your family and friends as an afterthought to your general Facebook timeline existence—and make sure you only post things that might be of interest to them. Any social push in this group is just a teeny tiny bit of icing on the cake compared to what you really can do with Facebook to get social media traction.

Your personal Facebook network of friends are not a primed audience for your content. They’re all too busy doing different things.

What Makes Good Social Media Content?

It has great pictures.

It is funny, interesting, weird or has general appeal.

It has compelling text.

The design is suited to an audience with a short attention span.

If it is informational, it is offering something new or unique and should be specifically marketed at the right people.

It is written for the unwashed masses, in simple English.

It is upbeat and positive, not depressing.

It looks respectable—the language is good English and there are no errant white spaces.

It does not pressure sell, or ask for anything initially from the audience.

Choosing Content That’s Right For Social Media

There are lots of ways to market content successfully on Facebook, and the best way to do it is to selectively choose the correct content in the first place. No one I know would click on “How To Cure A Boil On Your Foot” or “How To Make Your Content Go SEO Spastic In 10 Easy Steps” unless they actually have boils on their feet or are SEO fanatics that haven’t had a gutful of those articles already.

Ask yourself if the content is funny, interesting, unusual or attractive. What is appealing about it? Does it appeal generally to the public or to a specific group of people? For example, an article on “How To Make Funny Balloon Animals” is probably going to have appeal to a wider range of people than “Myrtleford Button Exhibition 2014”.

Remember that people on Facebook have short attention spans. If they open up your link to see a wall of text or standard, boring pictures, they will bounce away pretty quickly. Make sure that you grab them in the most compelling manner possible with the appearance of the page and the way in which it is written.

Remember to put on a happy face when you visit Facebook. Only not too happy, or people will think you’re a frootloop.

Creating Compelling Content

“Compelling” in this instance does not mean having any sentence that involves CAPITAL LETTERS or multiple exclamation marks (!!!) or uses sales copy in brilliant Web 2.0 fonts. Keep the fonts looking as normal as possible.

Compelling is when you subtly invite attraction, such as asking a question, teasing the reader with what’s coming next, giving interesting information about what the content is about, or making a unique dramatic statement. An example of an interesting introduction can be found on this page.

Pair the great text with an inviting photo, which is an amazing masterpiece of what you are talking about or is really funny and will make people look twice. It can be hard to find good social-type photos for free on the internet, so consider investing in stock photos or making your own original and unique images to attract people.

Lastly, remember that content that does well on social media is not anally retentive. That is, it is meant for a happy and relaxed reading experience that keeps the reader fascinated. Ditch any depressive diary entries, long informational articles full of gobbledegook that do not have wide appeal or articles that are heavy on pressure selling. No one wants to read this stuff in their spare time.

All of these non-social articles are better off having SEO applied to them to attract organic search engine traffic, because the audience was already searching for what you are writing about anyway, and are primed to buy/interact with the information you give them.

No one likes a hard sell and these days, it can almost be called "the social fist of death".

Getting Your Work Out There

OK, so now you have selected some social content and it’s time to post. You can post it to 20,000 general people, but you’ll gain the most social engagement from readers who are already primed to read about your topic. Hence, it is a good idea to find company and community pages that are in line with the subject matter you’ve created.

When I wrote a article about Succulent Gardens For Small Spaces, I got about 5 likes and 2 comments from family and friends (which was a colossal effort on their part, judging from how many likes I usually get). I found some communities on Facebook by typing synonyms of succulents into the top search bar (eg, I typed “succulents”, then tried “cacti”, then “gardening”, etc).

I chose communities/companies with a sizeable audience (no point in posting to 10 people) who also had pages worth looking at without spam on them. They also had to have posts that showed their readers were interested in the same sort of stuff I was producing.

Also, it’s very important that you check what type of posts they are doing before you post yours. If they are posting all their own original content and there is nothing from other people at all, then they are probably unlikely to promote your stuff. Looking for a sharing, caring page or a page that could use your content. After all, you’re more likely to have your link featured if the admin is desperate for good content to feed a hungry audience.

When you post to relevant groups and communities, your audience will be much more involved with your content.

Handy Tip For Posting On Companies & Communities

A neat trick if a company / community / club posts your content on their timeline, is to click “share” on your post on their timeline and share it back to your own timeline. This can be beneficial in milking a few more likes from family and friends, because they can see that someone else with authority thinks it’s good and likes it. Over time, you might possibly impress a few of them.

This handy flowchart shows what would happen if everyone shared your content.

When I found a community to post to, I made sure to “like” the community page first, then I posted my article onto their page with a message like this:

"Hi there! I love your page and thought your readers might be interested in my article. I’m a cacti gardener because I am hopeless at growing other plants, but succulents seem to thrive with me, especially in harsh conditions. I also don’t have much space as I’m in a rental and I thought others might be interested in this too."

(post link to article, which ideally allows a picture too)

This kind of message tells the community/company owner that you are interested in them and their page and that you’re offering something of value to readers. There’s nothing more annoying to a Facebook page administrator than a “post my article, even though it’s totally unrelated” type of message.

It’s important to post sparingly on company and community pages so that you don’t end up with them all putting your article live on the same day and getting into hissy fits over it and with you. Post to one company/community in that niche per week. If they like it, they will publish it on their timeline, for all their fans to see.

Keep an eye on the page and see if they post your link. Sometimes, you will need to respond to comments on it for a few days. It is also very good etiquette to like some other stuff on their page too—it shows you are a bit more genuine.

Another Handy Tip

If you have suitable material, club, organisation and association pages can be good places to post. Often, the lone and desperate volunteer Facebook administrator is keen for new content and will happily leap on your offering and promote it far and wide. Just make sure that your content is specifically in line with the topic of the page.

Cater to each group with specifically related content.

Open Groups Vs Closed Groups

Depending on what type of content you have, groups can be a useful way to get some interest in your content. If it is a busy group, you’ll find that your link slips quickly down the feed and may only be liked a few times, however you’ll have a hungry audience. If it’s a quiet group, you might stay up the top of the page a bit longer, but there’s less people seeing it. The key is to find a group with a reasonable audience who seem to like interacting a lot with each other.

I like to think that posting content to groups works best if it is absolutely compelling and not just a little bit compelling. If it is very specifically related to the topic of the group, then it’s worth a try. If it offers something new and useful or is simply amazing or outstandingly funny it’s also worth it. But if it’s just repeating the same old stuff found online already, you would be wasting your time.

Groups are a good way to get shares as well as comments, because people want to chat instead of just reading, plus they’re looking for interesting stuff to share on their timeline with similar friends. There is some time involved in joining groups, as sometimes an admin has to approve you to join. Then, once you get accepted, there’s no guarantee that anyone’s talking about what the group topic says they’re talking about.

It's true! All you really need are lots of real likes to get better page ranking.

I once checked out a singles group for fun but once inside, all I found was rude men posting demeaning jokes about females, while 500 women sat on the sidelines and didn’t interact at all because they didn’t like what was going on.

I had to ask myself why anyone would stay a member of this group and hope to interact properly with singletons. As you can guess, it would have been a horrible place to post a link as it would have invited too many idiotic comments from the dolts in there and the women probably wouldn’t have liked it since they were in hiding. However, I have seen a number of fantastic art and writing groups where people are heavily involved in supporting each other’s work.

When you post to groups, write a short teaser with the link to attract people and don’t just do a link and dash out the door. Interact with the group. People will know not to bother with fly-by-nighters. The idea is to pick groups you wouldn’t mind interacting with occasionally, preferably groups which are suited to your hobbies and interests, which you have (hopefully) created content for, because you are interested in the subject matter.

Two More Tips For Virality

If you have excellent feedback on your content and everyone seems to like it, consider doing a campaign on it to assist it going viral if you run out of places to post it. Put $5 on a Facebook ad for clicks (not impressions) to your content URL and set your own manual limit, so you don’t pay too much per click. Make the ad an amazing, compelling ad with the best photo and interesting text. On non-sales topics, this should end up very cheap, but in saturated niches it can be very expensive. You’ll have to see what the average bid per click is.

Are you producing a lot of content on the same subject? Consider starting up your own Facebook community. Create a beautiful looking page, garner some initial likes (usually by inviting, bribing or forcing family and friends), post a variety of interesting items and then run some campaigns through Facebook ads to promote the community. It might seem silly to do all of this work (and it should be viewed as fun, not work if you’re doing this) but I have seen many people being able to post their own stuff with their own audience of 5,000 people who love it and like it and share it with everyone they know. I wouldn’t start a community with only a couple of articles in the niche, but if you have loads of them, it would be worth a small time commitment and some money to grow it properly and get your stuff going viral over the longer term.

Don't be afraid to share content which works with a specific audience regularly.

The successful rise in the popularity of social media shows us that people love to communicate and this means social media will get even bigger in the future.

And Finally….

Getting content lots of likes and engagement on Facebook depends on a number of factors, including how great the content really is, whether people are generally amenable to it, where you post it and to how many people.

If you try just about everything in this article and it’s not working, then it’s just not meant to be with that particular piece of content. Stop stressing, let it go and practice creating a fresh piece of social content that is better looking, a better topic and better reading than the last one. Or change tactics and go for organic Google search instead.

Search engines (and Google in particular) are paying a lot more attention these days to social engagement when they’re ranking pages, so if you can “do” social media, you’ll enjoy a lot more success with only a bit of effort. It helps if you genuinely enjoy social media too, and believe me, it comes across as obvious if you don’t.

Ultimately social media is just another way to get visitors to your page and make it pay off for you, so pick whichever method floats your boat. If you are not a social media person, keep doing what you are doing. If you haven’t tried social media before and would like to, I hope these tips show you how to get your work out there and appreciated properly!

© 2014 Suzanne Day

Angelica winslet on July 13, 2018:

Great tips that will really help to get lots of Facebook likes and engagement but I suggest ECIR Pro that is a great social media marketplace who helps to get lots of real Facebook likes and engagement.

TANJIM ARAFAT SAJIB from Bangladesh on March 11, 2016:

A really wonderful and moreover required post in the modern time of social media campaign. There are so many fake software and tools for generating fake facebook likes that it is almost impossible to think that there is any effective way of getting real facebook likes! The author has opened up a good way of hope for us and now we can work in the way mentioned in the hub and try to get more and more real facebook likes. This will help us do well with the social media campaign and we will get benefits for it. After all who doesn’t love to get that extra benefit!!

Marlene Bertrand from USA on July 07, 2015:

I learned a lot by reading this article. Your tip about posting to company and community pages is the most helpful tip I have ever read. I absolutely adore the idea of sharing from the community page to my page.

Susie Lehto from Minnesota on June 27, 2015:

It would be fun to have content go viral on Facebook. Thank you for the tips, Suzanne.

Catherine Giordano from Orlando Florida on June 14, 2015:

Thanks for the social media tips. I've been having some luck with my hubs on facebook. I'm glad to hear that facebook engagement helps with google. As you said, your actual friends don't do much but people on special interest groups like, share, and comment a lot.

Richard Bivins from Charleston, SC on February 07, 2015:

Awesome tips here. I've only used Facebook to market my self published books. Many years ago I had my HP account connected to my Facebook account, through Notes I think, and it posted a link to every thing I published here... it took me a while to realize that was a bad move. I get a lot of traction through FB on my book promotions so I should probably give it a try with my Hub content as well.

Graham Lee from Lancashire. England. on January 30, 2015:

Hi Suzanne. Thanks for this superb hub, so informative and helpful and of course your usual first class presentation. I think the asking a question 'hook' is tip top.

voted up and all.

Graham.

Anthony sega gabe on January 09, 2015:

Many thanks to the HubPage Author Suzanne Day more informative tips how to cope up with FB Marketing and operating system posting product share' like. etc!!! and many more ways!!!!!*****

Glenn Stok from Long Island, NY on August 10, 2014:

I'm not on Facebook but the ideas you talk about here are useful on any social media site. It's food for thought no-matter where we are on the web.

Suzanne Day (author) from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia on August 08, 2014:

Hi Rishabhkaps, yes it lends a touch of authority when someone else is publishing your work and family and friends can see that.

Rishabh Kapoor from New Delhi on August 08, 2014:

A good read for me and to just to mention, i like the handy tip (in the right sidebar) regarding re-sharing post on the same wall twice. This is really a quick trick to get additional likes and shares to your post.

John from New Brunswick, Canada on July 30, 2014:

I've book marked this and will try implementing some of your suggestions. I do regularly post my stuff online and I have quite a few readers. I'm not that concerned about likes but it would be nice to get more shares and more traffic as a result.

Suzette Walker from Taos, NM on July 18, 2014:

Great hub with lots of great information and ideas for marketing on Facebook. Very engaging write and I enjoyed reading this. Voted up and shared!

Dennis Hoyman from Southwestern, Pennsylvania on July 13, 2014:

Suzanne Day

Great writing and a great hub on how to get more traffic and likes to your facebook page. Thank You so much for the information keep up the great work! Gardener Den.

Suzanne Day (author) from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia on July 09, 2014:

Hi TimeTraveller, best way is to make a Facebook fan page as exciting looking as possible so you compel people to join. Then share the fan page with everyone you know and you might want to run a $5 Facebook advertising campaign to attract new people too. Eventually there is a flow on effect and more people join up naturally. Another way is to post your fan page to groups. But the content has to be relevant to the audience you are advertising to, and compelling enough for people to join.

Sondra Rochelle from USA on July 09, 2014:

I can't even figure out how to get people to my FB home page. I have tried to connect, but few people respond. Just never did do well with FB.

Claudia Mitchell on July 03, 2014:

With the continuing changes that go on at facebook I'm never quite sure what will work and what won't. This is quite informative and helpful!

Christin Sander from Midwest on June 29, 2014:

An excellent hub, full of great information. I've done a lot with Pinterest and have done a bit with Facebook, but certainly need to do more. I had thought about doing a couple of promoted posts, but wasn't sure if it would be worth the investment or not. I may have to give that a go also. Pinterest does very well for me, but it is not as interactive as FB etc. I am inspired now to put some more energy into the FB thing. :) Voted shared etc.

Tori Canonge from North Carolina on June 18, 2014:

This is an extremely well written hub! I like your idea about finding different Facebook groups where you could publish relevant articles and links. I hate the ones that let you spam the feed to death, but there are others that are really awesome to read because all of the information that is posted is relevant. Personally, my Facebook crowd has diminished because I deleted half the people on my friends list for various reasons. I also got rid of my Twitter but I'm thinking about signing up for that again. I think you hit the nail on the head about balancing article posts with other information and statuses. Great job!

LisaKeating on June 12, 2014:

Great advice. I just started posting some of my articles on like-minded Facebook group pages and have started getting a little traffic from it. I agree that it is important to interact and not just post and run.

Nithya Venkat from Dubai on June 06, 2014:

Great tips for Facebook users will help to get many likes.

Nadine May from Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa on June 05, 2014:

This is an excellent article about networking on Facebook. I have several fan pages and belong to many groups, all for different reasons. Images work the best for me, so I often take an image I created for my article and add a quote or relevant text onto the image and then post this first on my profile page where I have the most followers, and then I wait for a few hours and post the same image in a group that applies to the topic. That way I reach a different audience. Your tips were very wise and informative. Voted up.

Oh and I pinned most of your images onto the social media board on Pinterest.

Laura Smith from Pittsburgh, PA on May 30, 2014:

This is helpful. I'm going to try this. I never understood how some people can get 100 likes for posting ridiculous comments while you try to post something worthwhile, and everyone ignores it.

Maggie.L from UK on May 30, 2014:

I rarely use facebook but this is great tips here for facebook users. Great hub.

Lizolivia from Central USA on May 29, 2014:

Very good idea, thanks for the tips.

Nell Rose from England on May 26, 2014:

Hiya, I totally forget to try to find similar pages on facebook that writes about the kind of stuff I do, I tend to share on the main page, but that's all, food for thought here, thanks!

Michael from Switzerland on May 26, 2014:

Facebook is becoming a harder place to market, but as you mention it is about friends. I find other networks are more suited to marketing like Pinterest and Twitter and spend more time on them as a result.

Devika Primić from Dubrovnik, Croatia on May 26, 2014:

Great hub! So interesting and useful Your suggestions are most informative.

Suhail Zubaid aka Clark Kent from Mississauga, ON on May 25, 2014:

Great article that I came on through the courtesy of a share by Flourish Anyway.

I have a FB page of my own which is open for public and have a closed private page also for interacting with FB 'friends'. I am not really anxious to make my public page very popular. I have a specific interest in my life and I project that (wildlife, wolves, and dogs and our partnership with them specially in wildlife conservation). I only care that I may be followed by few dedicated fans rather than a huge mass. Like you, I actually like to interact with people on related community pages (hiking with dogs, wolves, etc) and have found it is better to be able to share my views with them and add links to my work.

I agree that there is no point of sharing anything with family and friends of my private FB page, because most of them there seem to be inclined to sharing (copying and pasting) without reading or interacting with others. There are extremely few 'friends' who post the original / self-created content.

Thank you so very much for sharing an awesome article.

Linda Bilyeu from Orlando, FL on May 24, 2014:

Great tips that I'm sure some one could use! :)

FlourishAnyway from USA on May 24, 2014:

Yay! We'll do that! Woo-hoo! Let's go kick some butt!

Suzanne Day (author) from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia on May 24, 2014:

Thank you everyone for your kind comments.

@FlourishAnyway, so are you, I've noticed! Let's travel towards 1million together ;)

FlourishAnyway from USA on May 24, 2014:

This was a terrific piece of work. Excellent advice. Sharing, pinning, voting up and more. You are rockin and Rollin these days!

Bill Holland from Olympia, WA on May 24, 2014:

I understand the need for it, obviously, but I long for the old days. Technology is wonderful, but.....

Have a great weekend!

John Hansen from Queensland Australia on May 24, 2014:

This is a very good and informative article Suzanne. You give great advice here and I have started to share more of my hubs on Facebook. Your group "What the Hub" is a good one. Voted up.

Dr Penny Pincher from Iowa, USA on May 24, 2014:

Great article! I think it is interesting to watch my Hub stats when one of my Hubs gets "discovered" and shared on Facebook. It usually starts as a few pageviews from Facebook, ramps up over a day or two, and then the views from Facebook stop. I had not tried to get a Hub to be popular on Facebook until I posted a couple on the "What the Hub" Facebook community within the past week. I even got a few likes!

Liz Elias from Oakley, CA on May 23, 2014:

Interesting food for thought. Thanks for pointing me to this article. I'm going to see what I can do about putting some of these ideas into practice; I do already share other hubbers' work on "my" FB/HP page. ;-)

Voted up, interesting and useful.