Years ago, Facebook was an excellent tool for social media managers who wanted to connect with audiences because it was virtually guaranteed that a large percentage of connected users would see your content. As time passed, however, Facebook continued to tweak the algorithms that determined who would see what, making it more difficult for users to automatically stumble across content. When the major Facebook page tweaks were unveiled over a year ago, many brands felt like their outreach on the network was destroyed. By default, brands can expect about ten percent of their content to be seen by the average person, which begs the question: what can be done to improve this? Below, we’ll discuss how you can increase visibility for your Facebook posts.

Promote the “See First” Option

Very recently, Facebook unveiled a new solution for brands who felt they were unfairly nerfed by the updates to algorithms that reduced overall visibility. This feature is known as the ‘See First’ option, and it makes it possible for anyone to always see your content. At the top of each Facebook page, users can enable the ‘See First’ option to ensure that your posts always appear at the top of their status feeds. This is in effect a manual override for individuals who want to be sure that they never miss any of your updates. Of course, promotion is required to convince users to enable this for your page, which means that the content you produce must be good. It is, however, one great option that can help improve visibility and ensure your content is pinging networks within your audience.

Use Dark Posts

The reason why Facebook nerfed brand page reach had everything to do with its movement toward a pay to play model. While free use of Facebook remains the status quo, reaching the majority of your connected audience at any given time is only achievable via paid engagements. Targeted ads can be deployed in a number of ways, but one great way in which to reach specific groups within your existing audience and beyond is the dark post. This is content that will appear as part of your page in the status feeds of users, but that will not show up on your page when accessed directly. This can allow you to target individuals in particular demographics without flooding the status feeds of those who are not interested, potentially damaging your credibility with select audiences.

Advertise via Mobile

With more people than ever using Facebook on mobile devices, mobile targeted ads are an essential part of expanding audience reach. Paid ad campaigns that are not pinging networks with mobile versions of ads will inevitably fall short and ensure that the rates of engagement are much lower than they could be otherwise. Much like how Google and other search engines are penalizing websites that do not adapt to mobile trends, Facebook will indirectly penalize brands that do not target mobile audiences by generating fewer engagements – likes, clicks, shares and so on – for each piece of content posted.