Getting your updates to appear in the coveted news feed is more challenging than ever.

I don’t have answers as to how the elusive Facebook algorithm works.

What I do have are some suggestions on how to ensure that your page posts are being seen by your fans to give your page the maximum visibility.

#1: Train Your Audience to Watch for Your Content

You want to make sure you are delivering good content so that your audience won’t want to miss a thing. The best way to do this is to work toward building super fans. Use these Facebook marketing strategies.

When you are delivering good content, interacting and building a community, your fans will come to your page on their own when they haven’t seen your posts. Be consistent with your posts (i.e., posting every day at 10 am, for example). Then your fans will know when they are missing something and come seek you out.

Your fans will come find you if you are delivering good content.

But then what? You can’t expect your audience always to come to you. That’s why you must take the next step.

#2: Educate Your Audience to Highlight Your Stories in Their News Feed

The good news is that Facebook pages are showing up in the news feed. People have a choice when viewing posts to highlight the story. When someone highlights a story, it indicates to Facebook that the person wants to see more stories like that one.

When a story has been highlighted, there is a little blue triangle in the upper-left corner of the story. Facebook typically chooses which stories to highlight based on past interactions, so getting more engagement (post likes, comments and shares) can also help indicate to Facebook that your page posts are important to a user.

The blue triangle in the upper-left corner indicates a highlighted story.

You can encourage highlighting by telling your audience to highlight your post so that they continue to see your posts. You won’t get any statistics about how many people actually do highlight your post, but you may get instant feedback and a better chance of showing up in the news feed!

Educate your fans on how they can keep getting your posts.

Notice how you can highlight a story by clicking on the blue arrow in the upper-right corner of a post that has not been highlighted.

To highlight a story, click the blue arrow in the upper-right corner.

Highlighting a story may be a good start to increasing your visibility, but there are other steps you can take to ensure it.

#3: Tell Your Audience to Create a Favorite Pages List

Again, make sure your audience knows that pages aren’t showing up in the news feed as often. If you are delivering good content and building relationships, your audience will want to stay in contact with you.

A way to ensure that people always see your posts is to have your fans put your page on a special “favorite pages” list. You will have to educate your audience how to create this list (sharing this post with them would be an easy way to accomplish this goal!).

The easiest way to create the favorite pages list is to follow these steps:

1. Go to your Lists on the left sidebar of your home page and click More.
2. Click Create a List in the upper-right corner.
   

   Create your new list.

3. Enter the name of your list in the pop-up box (you can call it “Favorite Pages” or “Tech Pages” or whatever makes sense for the pages that you will be adding to this list). Click Create.
4. On the right side, you can type in the names of the pages you want to add in the search box. But the easiest way is to click the drop-down menu Manage List and select Add/Remove Friends.
   

   Select Add/Remove Friends.

5. All of your friends are now showing in the pop-up box, but in order to see pages as well, you need to select Pages from the drop-down menu in the upper-left corner of the pop-up box. Now you can easily select the pages you wantto be on this list.
   

   Find the pages you want to add to the list by selecting Pages.

After you have created your list, all you have to do to see all of your favorite page updates is to click on the Favorite Page list (or whatever you titled your list) on the left sidebar under the Lists heading. You can also make this a Favorite item so it’s always showing at the top of your left sidebar as shown in this screenshot.

Add your list to your favorites so you can access it with just one click.

To add a list to your favorites, navigate to your lists by clicking More next to the lists on the left sidebar and navigating to the list name. Click on the pencil icon and then select Add to Favorites.

Select Add to Favorites.

#4: Leverage the Facebook Subscribe Button

Because personal profile posts are being shown more in the news feed, you may want to start using your personal profile more for business. Facebook terms state that you aren’t supposed to “use your personal profile for commercial gain” as shown under their Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, point #4.  But you can talk about your business! Direct people to your blog posts, give helpful tips and talk about what events you are participating in.

If you are worried about privacy, the Facebook privacy settings have gotten better so you can control who sees each update. Your customers want to connect with you personally on Facebook (not just via your Facebook page) and the Subscribe button will give them that personal connection.

If you are the face of your company, or are networking and connecting with people, leverage the Subscribe button by enabling it. Find out more about the Subscribe button in our post here.

Mari Smith recently included similar posts on her Facebook page and her Facebook timeline. Her post to her personal profile got almost 4 times as much engagement (comments, shares and likes). To be fair, she does have almost twice as many subscribers (113,000) as fans (60,628) but that in itself is amazing as she has had her Facebook page up for years but her Subscribe button open for less than a year.

Mari's post on her fan page.

Mari's similar post on her personal profile got almost 4 times as much interaction.

One other powerful part of the Subscribe button is that Facebook is giving suggestions of whom to subscribe to within Facebook. Navigate around and you will see these suggestions in the upper-left corner of certain pages. Yet another way you can gain exposure with a new audience!

Facebook suggests "People To Subscribe To."

I hope these four suggestions give you some new ideas on how to gain visibility for your business with both your Facebook page and by adding your Facebook profile into your marketing strategy.

How about you? What do you think about the decreased exposure of Facebook page posts? Have you found your interaction has gone down or stayed about the same? Leave your questions and comments in the box below.

When setting up the event as an organizer, I highly recommend you leave all the default settings the way they are – that is, allow guests to invite others, upload photos, write on the wall, etc. The reason is that every one of these activities creates news items that go out into the feeds of those individuals and their friends. This is great viral visibility for you and for them. Here is an example of all options you want to check:

And, as an attendee of any event on Facebook, you can easily help create buzz and visibility for both yourself and the event organizer. Win:win!

I do recommend being strategic and mindful about the events you RSVP for. (I’m sure, like me, you get your fair share of non-relevant event invitations!)

Also, when setting up your own events, be sure to choose a really catchy title, subtitle and photo. These three fields are the only ones seen in “Requests” when you invite your friends (and they invite their friends). The small greeting you can include goes out in the email notification, so that’s important too.

Here are my top nine tips for creating buzz as a Facebook Event attendee and/or host.

1.  Always RSVP

If you are attending an event, make sure to RSVP and write a message in the box on the “Request” page.  Here is an example of a personal invite to an event.  The invitee could then write a reply in the box below. If you want to punch it up a bit, you can even record a short video from your computer, letting your friend know you are excited to attend their event.  And then all you need to do is click on the video icon and upload it!

2. Get Noticed

If you RSVP to an event, make sure to write a note on the event wall – whether your RSVP is a yes, no or maybe.  This is great visibility for you!

Also, if it is your event, continue to generate buzz by periodically commenting on your own event wall. When people RSVP and write on your event wall, go write on their wall to thank them personally. Comment on any added photos/videos/links. Each of these activities goes into your mini feed and your friends’ news feeds. I call this strategy “RSV” – radical, strategic visibility.

3. Upload Photos

Make sure to choose an engaging photo for your main event description and add multiple photos related to the event to pique interest.  An engaging photo should be eye-catching, warm, friendly, and inviting. Typically a person’s face is better than logos/images/graphics. You MUST include a photo or your event will have that nasty question mark. And who wants to attend a “?” event?

4. Upload Videos and Links

As mentioned in tip #1, you can record a video and upload it to any of your RSVPs.  If it is your event, you can make a short video explaining what your event is about and upload it to the invite. And just like photos and videos, links are a great way to offer more value as well.  You will want to make sure you include a link for your participants to register if you have an opt-in strategy.  Make this very clear to your participants.

5. Write a Personal Message

This makes your event more personable.  Most people have their email notifications turned on and they’ll get an email with your event title, date, time and your personal message. I also recommend including the time zone in the personal message, because Facebook defaults to your own time zone.

6. Send Out Invites

Click on “Invite People to Come” and invite your friends. This invitation will go into your friends’ “Event Requests.”

7. Spread the Word

Click the “Share” button and “Post to your Profile” and your invite will go on your wall for all to see.

Or use the “Share” button to send an invite to specific friends or lists.

This is my rule (you may want to test your own parameters): I only promote about one event of my own on Facebook every month, so I don’t have any qualms about inviting all friends because my events are virtual (conference calls).  (In this case, I would use tip #6 above and “Invite People to Come” and “Select All” to invite everyone.) For location-specific events, you may want to be more selective.

8.  Tweet About Your Event

Send out tweets with a link to the Facebook event. Preferably not just, “Check out my event! [insert link].” Rather, offer something enticing like, “Learn How to Create a BUZZ With Facebook Events [insert link—use a short URL].”  (Link to either the Facebook Event page or your registration page.)

Also include the link in your Facebook status updates periodically and mention your event on Plurk, LinkedIn, Plaxo, FriendFeed, Ping.fm – whichever platforms you’re active on and have followers/friends! Your friends and followers will happily pass the snipped link on for you.

9.  Experiment With Social Ads

Promote your event with Social Ads and every time someone RSVPs, their name and photo may appear alongside your ad. Experiment with a weekly/monthly budget and see what happens.

10. Send Out Reminders

As the event date approaches, be sure to gently remind people who have not yet registered that there’s still time.

Wow, that was a lot to cover!  I hope you find value in these tips!

What do you think? Did you learn something new about Facebook Events? What has your experience been so far with Facebook Events? Share your thoughts in the Comments box below.