Avoid This Mistake and Use This Tip to Reach More People on Facebook for Free

When it comes to digital, the only thing more important than doing something is avoiding common pitfalls. When you have created great content but then share it, email it, or post it incorrectly the results that be frustrating.

On the other hand, when you do things the right way (working smarter not harder) the results can be significant. We've seen that difference between doing it "right" and doing it the "wrong way" can be 10x, 20x, even 50x difference in reach i.e. instead of reaching 20 people you may reach 1000!

Want to make sure you're not making costly mistakes and getting the most out of your efforts? Download our free Content Marketing Guide a Social Media Checklist

So, here are two quick tips to help though remember - your content, image, and title need to be solid and interesting or it won't really matter.

Avoid: Posting a link to your page without a message

When you share a link to your Facebook page, whether if it's from your website or someone else's, you SHOULD include a custom message. People like interacting with humans but when you share just the link it feels very cold.

The message can be as simple as "Makes sense" if you're stating a truth or it can be a sentence or two.

Pro-Tip: don't giveaway the farm. If you include too many details the user doesn't need to click the link. If they don't click the link two very bad things happen:

1. they don't go to your website and
2. Facebook doesn't see the click (user engagement is key) and thus you don't get credit for being interesting and relevant so your post reaches fewer people! 

Do: Whenever possible, tag businesses and people in your custom message

If you post about an event, a business, a group of people - whatever - then tag the related parties. You can tag by typing "@" then the name of the person or page and Facebook will suggest matches. Select the match and it'll appear in blue as you can see in the sample above. 

The benefit is that this both links to their page (which is nice for the reader) but it also notifies the page admins or people tagged thus encouraging them to share the post with their audience which, per the not about engagement above, means you'll reach more people.

That's a good thing!

Pro-Tip: Facebook doesn't always find the match you're looking for, especially if the page name is long or if the person isn't a follower of your page. Such is life, don't sweat it but you may want to message them directly to share the post with them.

Also, after you paste the URL Facebook grabs a preview of the page. You can then delete the link if you'd like, some people (like me) prefer the cleaner look of just having my custom message without the fully spelled out link.

Do you pay to boost posts on Facebook or are you thinking about it?

Read our real-world example about what happened when we boosted a post on Facebook.

Looking for help with content ideas to improve your SEO & Social Media? Check out our free local marketing assistant, Buzz