Tips for Increasing Your Visibility on your Facebook Page

It’s a new year and the Facebook changes to privacy settings — how others interact with you and what you see — are now in full force. You can read about these changes here in a December post  on Indies Unlimited.

Now that things are different, how do we get the most from our Facebook Pages? As we know, Facebook has crushed organic visibility for Facebook Page owners. It’s quite simple why — they want you to buy ads.

Let’s talk about how we can increase our visibility within our Pages and maximize your exposure while playing the Facebook game.


Increasing engagement and visibility on your Facebook page is not impossible, just very difficult. Here are a few strategies to chip away and build organic growth.

Engage with other Pages – A real communication with other Facebook Pages in your niche will go a long way toward building relationships. When looking for the “right” Pages to engage, try to break out of our writer circles. We are all comfortable engaging across very common lines, but rarely do we engage with the real niche. You see, our niche is not other writers; our niche is baseball, cancer, dogs, truck drivers, and millions of other subjects. Make a pledge to seek out one or two Pages that focus more on the content that you’re interested in rather than hanging out with other authors.

Facebook is a tool – Many people are literally trying to run their business ON Facebook. Think of Facebook as a leased copy machine in your business. You own your website; that’s where you want conversions to occur. Get people off Facebook and into your domain. Quality blogs, interesting conversation and calls to action will keep people engaged to your website.

Build your email list – Hand-in-hand with “Facebook is a tool,” getting targeted Facebook users onto your mailing list will help you build your business faster. We can’t control what happens on Facebook, but we do control what happens in our domain. Use email marketing newsletters to deepen your connections and build long-lasting relationships with your readers.

Facebook Post less frequently – Huh? Did I just say that? Instead of posting more often, focus on high quality, thoughtful posts on your Facebook Page. Less is more. People get burned out. A friend of mine posts daily. I really want to support him. Alas, you can only do so much. Three hundred sixty-five posts a year might be a great accomplishment, but no one can keep up with the content.

Steer away from specific Keywords – The rumor is that Facebook is focusing on certain keywords in order to demote posts. Words such as buy, like, share, download found within the content or the text of a link will destroy your visibility. Stay clear of these sure-fire self-promotion words and you’ll have a better shot at growing organically.

Keep in mind that Facebook changes all the time. You may or may not have experienced changes to your visibility. Just know — it will happen eventually. Put into play a couple of the above suggestions and you should see a blip on your Facebook EKG.

A version of this article originally posted on Indies Unlimited. Jim Devitt is the author of the #1 Kindle Bestselling Young Adult novel, The Card and So This is Christmas. He's also a healthcare consultant specializing in helping healthcare companies and practices develop a social media marketing platform, and maximize cash flow. You can find him posting weekly to Indies Unlimited and occasionally as a contributor on Yahoo!

Facebook Making Changes to its Privacy Settings in 2015

On January 1, 2015, Facebook is changing its terms of service to include new privacy issues that allow users to control their information. Of course, in Facebook speak, that means that you must be a rocket scientist in order to interpret the terms of service and how to control the new privacy settings.

I will say though, what’s different about this change is that Facebook announced it more than a month before its enactment. Normally they go along and change things on the fly and say, “Oh, by the way, we just changed everything.”

So what does this mean for us? Facebook is introducing “Privacy Basics”, a new system to show you who can see your information, the amount of information that others can see, from all aspects of the platform. They’ve broken down the basics into three categories:

• What Others See About You
• How Others Interact With You
• What You See

It’s important to note that the new launch won’t change any of the settings that are in place now. If you want to have more control over privacy settings, you’ll have to go into these areas to make the changes manually. Here’s a few examples of the things you’ll have access to:

Post- Choose who can see photos and other things you post on Facebook
Profile - Adjust how your profile looks to someone else
Friends List - Don’t you hate it when other people troll your friends list when they view your profile? Now you’ll have and option to control this function.
Search - What do non-friends see when they search for you?
Timeline - Learn how to manage what other people can post on your timeline.
Untagging - This is a big one. You’ll be able to un-tag a picture that someone else has tagged you in. Personally, for me, this drives me nuts. If I want a picture of my family on Facebook, I’ll put it there. Now you’ll be able to control other peoples tags when they pertain to you.
Ads - Back in June, I wrote about some ad issues and ways to minimize what you see through a third-party organization that can help you minimize interest-based ads. Now Facebook has helped you do this through their internal settings. In 2015, you’ll have control (to an extent) of what ads you want to see. In some cases, you’ll be able to go as far as to block a particular advertiser.

Take a few moments after the first of the year to make your Facebook experience work better for you. On Facebook’s Privacy Basics Page, you can read more on each of these new changes. Some options are currently available.

Now is the time is to set a date with your computer to review the privacy settings in Facebook. We’re all looking for a cleaner, less junkified way to use the largest social media platform in the world.

 Jim Devitt is the author of the #1 Kindle Bestselling Young Adult novel, The Card and the Holiday Hit, So This is Christmas. A version of this post appeared on Indies Unlimited. 

Search Engine Ranking - The Power of Social and Search

Combining social and search is a powerful combination. 

The days of static websites dictating Search Engine Results Page (SERP) ranking is over. You might even think that setting up a Pinterest or Facebook Page gets you in the game, but it doesn’t. Activity plays a huge role in the business of discoverability. 

Even Google’s Chairman, Eric Schmidt recently admitted in a Bloomberg TV interview discussed in PC Magazine, that they missed the boat on social media. In the interview he said, “At Google, the biggest mistake that I made was not anticipating the rise of a social networking phenomenon … Not a mistake we’re going to make again.”  

Social Media Spec Sheets - Facebook, Google+ and Twitter

Keeping your social media profiles updated and in order can be a real pain. We’ve all done it—you decide that you want to change your banner on your Facebook Page and three hours later you have it just right! What a waste of time.

Google+ is now #2 in Social Networking

The fix is in.

In the competitive world of Social Media, Google+ has moved ahead of Twitter as the 2nd largest social network, behind Facebook.

globalwebindex.net

Wow, you might say. How much time do you spend on Google+? That’s what I thought, not much. Is that bad?


Well, let’s break down those numbers a bit. The study looked at total number of active users. Back in October, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook claimed that his platform had reached 1 billion active users. You can see his post on his Facebook timeline announcing that milestone right here.

Myspace is Back ... Really?

They’re back! 

Yup, the New Myspace has been rebranded and re-launched. What? You didn’t know the old one was gone? Technically, it never was really gone, just forgotten about.

Myspace has rebranded itself as a social entertainment network. It focuses heavily on music and comes off as a cross between Tumblr and Pinterest.

Myspace is currently in “beta” test. There is suppose to be connectivity with Facebook and Twitter, but as of this writing, the functionality was not working.

You can sign up at www.myspace.com.