Facebook Tips From The Ultimate Networker

Robert Scoble, an American blogger, author and technology evangelist at Rackspace, is an avid and frequent user of social media. One might say he straddles the line between sharing and “oversharing.”  I could have lived without seeing him wearing his Google glasses in the shower. LOL

However, one must admire his unbridled enthusiasm for using technology and making it better. To that end of making Facebook a better experience, he posted a number of tips that you could try to refine your Facebook feed. See Robert Scoble’s 22 Tips on Making Facebook Better.

Most of the tips are quite legitimate, such as the more you share on a topic, the more you will see in your Facebook feed of items about that topic. Conversely, if you use the “Hide” function judiciously, you can minimize the items you see that are related. He states that he turns off selfies, memes and anything that makes you “stupider.”

It is a lot to take in. And you may not even read all of it. So I thought I would highlight one tip, late in the list, that is truly significant, and that most Facebook users do not realize.

#17. – Most content does NOT get to you. If you want to see more from specific people, VISIT THEIR PROFILES at least once a week and engage on their content. Or, even better, put them in a list and visit that list. Lists show all. Your main feed only shows you the most popular stuff from them (and that’s not really true, Facebook’s algorithms look at a variety of things to figure out what to show you). In general you are only seeing one out of 10 of my posts, if that. So you gotta visit my profile more often to make sure you get it all.

This lack of seeing others’ content has always been true in Facebook, because the Facebook gods manage what is delivered to you in your feed. However, the restricted news feed content HAS become worse. This applies to everyone using Facebook for both business and personal purposes.

How does one get around it? As Scoble suggests, you can manually address it by visiting profiles or you can create lists. This works for one’s personal accounts.

For business, it’s important to realize that only a small portion of your audience is receiving your posts. My tips for managing this include:

• Test, test, test. You should try out content types and timing that capture the most audience share.
• Reschedule, repost. Within reason, there is a benefit to posting information again to reach a larger portion of your “fan” audience.
• Try Facebook ads. With paid content, Facebook is helping you deliver the content directly to folks on the platform. It’s worth experimenting with the paid side of Facebook.