Obstacle 7: “No One Is Reading My Facebook Posts.”

It’s difficult to tell who is reading or even seeing your Facebook posts. Sometimes you post things and nothing happens. Then you ask one of your favorite customers (or your spouse or business partner) what they thought, and you discover that they didn’t even see it. Two big factors are at play here: Crowded News Feeds and the ever-changing formula Facebook uses to decide what to put in each individual’s News Feed.

People are using Facebook (and other social networks) to connect to more people and businesses than ever before. In February 2010, Facebook had over 400 million users; by December 2011, that number grew to 800 million.1 As a result, people have so many posts and comments flowing into their Feeds that they may not see yours, especially if they don’t check Facebook around the time you posted. By the next time they connect, many other posts will have risen above yours, and they may never scroll down to see what happened hours ago. That’s why you want to be thoughtful about timing; post to multiple channels and at different times as we discussed in Chapter 8. You want to increase the odds that your audience will catch your content.