Have you seen this post on Facebook recently?

“Due to Facebook’s new ‘pay to promote posts’ policy, only about 10% of people that ‘like’ a fan page will see the status updates.

In order to see our posts and notifications just click/hover over the ‘Liked’ button (beneath the cover photo, to the right) and activate the ‘show in news feed’ option.

This will allow you to see all of our posts. Please share this message wherever you can on Facebook!”

The Good News: It’s a myth.

The Bad News: The 10% statistic isn’t entirely untrue.

I will tell you why.

1) Facebook determines what gets in front of you. The reality is that Facebook uses an algorithm called “EdgeRank” (which has been studied and analyzed and written to death about) to determine what gets into everyone’s News Feed.

Most people who clicked the Like button on your Page initially are not seeing all of your posts. They never were.

Before Promoted Posts were even an option, only about 12% of your Facebook page fans were even seeing your posts at all.

Maybe they liked your page a few months ago but haven’t interacted with it since. EdgeRank is not going to force your posts into their News Feeds if it does not think it is relevant.

2) The shelf life of a Facebook post is very short. HubSpot conducted a study and found that the overall shelf life of a social media post is only 3 hours.

All your fans are not on Facebook at the exact time you are posting. And they may not be on it 3 hours from the time that you’ve posted.

It’s up to you to analyze your Page Insights to see what times of day and what days are the best for your particular audience and online community. It might be 2 AM on Thursdays; it might be 5 PM on Saturdays. Test, analyze, improve – that gets results.

3) Posts that get the most engagement win. EdgeRank assigns a “quality score” to all posts – updates, text, photos, videos, check-ins, links – and the subsequent interaction with it – comments and likes.

So every time a fan of yours Likes a post or interacts with your page by leaving a comment, EdgeRank gives it an “edge”.

The formula is here:

There are hundreds of blogs and articles with tips on how to get more likes, comments and shares on your page.

One of the best that I have found is John Haydon’s 27 Ways to Increase Engagement on Your Facebook Page and Mari Smith’s 7 Ways to Craft Your Facebook Posts for Maximum Shares.

If you are repeatedly sharing posts that get a lot of interaction and engagement, if you adhere to Facebook best practices and if you are willing to get creative and think outside the box, your page has a real shot to be successful without giving Facebook a single cent.

What are your thoughts on Promoted Posts? Have you used them? Why or why not? Please leave your thoughts in the Comments section. Thanks for reading!

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