Why are my friends not seeing my posts on Facebook?

1) Posts are shared to your Facebook Page from a user’s Personal Profile or a non-public Facebook Page

If your Facebook feed doesn’t appear to be showing the most recent posts, or if some posts which are shared to your Facebook page are missing, then the most likely explanation is that those posts in your feed may be shared from a user’s personal Facebook profile or a Facebook page which has an age or location restriction on it. Facebook’s privacy policy doesn’t allow posts that you share from personal profiles or non-public pages to be shared outside of Facebook as the posts don’t technically belong to your page, they belong to the user who posted it to their personal profile or to the non-public page that posted it. There’s an example of a post shared from a user’s personal profile below. Posts from non-public Facebook pages can’t be displayed as they have an age or location restriction on them which prevent them from being publicly accessible via Facebook’s API.

Please note, this isn’t a limitation of our plugin, it’s a restriction which Facebook places on it’s content in order to protect the privacy of their users.

Potential solutions

• You could re-post the content to your page rather than sharing it to your page. If you re-post the content as your own post on your Facebook page then the content now originates from your Facebook page and will be displayed in the feed on your website.
• If you were to share a post from another Facebook page or public source, rather than sharing it from someone’s personal profile or a restricted page, then it would show up in your feed outside of Facebook, but by default any posts that originate from a personal profile are protected by Facebook’s privacy policy and are the private content of that profile owner.

2) Some posts are being filtered out

Check that you have all of the post types selected in the following location: Facebook Feed > Customize > Post Types, or that you aren’t excluding some post types in the shortcode itself, using the type option.

Check that you don’t have a “filter” set on the feed which is only showing posts that contain certain words or phrases. The filter setting is in the following location: Facebook Feed > Customize > Filter Content by String, or you may be using the filter shortcode option.

3) The missing posts are set to have an audience restriction

When you create a post you can select to only show it to a preferred audience (screenshot). If you select this option then the post will no longer be publicly visible and so Facebook won’t allow it to be displayed outside of their platform. In order for the post to be displayed in our plugin you would need to remove any audience restrictions so that it’s “Public”. You can tell whether a post is public as it will have a “globe” icon at the top:

Have you ever wondered why some of your Facebook posts get dozens of comments or “likes” and others not as many? Would you like more people to see your posts?

Here are five ways you can get more people to see the content you post on the world’s largest social media platform.

First, Let’s Conduct an Experiment

This’ll be fun.Go to your Facebook profile. Search for an older picture that has already received several comments and likes. To make this more interesting, look for a picture that is a least two or three years old.

Once you’ve found the picture, do two things:

1. “Like” the picture or one of the comments that somebody made on the picture.
2. Write a funny or interesting new comment on that picture.

Now…sit back and watch what happens.

Chances are good that you’ll receive a new notification that one of your friends or followers engaged with the picture. Maybe it was a new Like or comment.

See what you’ve done? You just resurrected this picture from obscurity and brought it back to life on some of your friends’ timelines. Remember…this was a picture you posted years ago.

This is the power of Facebook’s News Feed algorithm.

How to Get Your Posts Seen by More People

The team at Facebook has created an algorithm that takes into account over “100,000 individual weights in the model that produces News Feed.” Their recipe is proprietary, so it is impossible to explain each of the factors that determine how high in your friends’ timelines your posts will appear.

However, through a little bit of research and loads of experimentation, I’ve discovered five ways for you to get more action on your Facebook posts.

1.  Sell Your Post

Have you noticed when you simply share a link or picture without making a comment on it that the post doesn’t receive many comments or likes? There’s a good reason for this. Facebook is a social medium. Your friends or fans want to read your thoughts about the picture or link. It’s important to put it in a context that encourages people to take notice.

So, when you post a link to a fascinating article or blog post, give your friends a provocative reason why they should click on it. And instead of just posting a picture from your vacation, tell us where you were and what happened right before the snapshot was taken.

In other words, sell your post.

2.  Tag People

This is especially important when posting pictures of you and a friend.

When you post a picture without tagging others then only your friends will see the picture. But when you tag a friend who is also in the picture then it opens your potential audience to their friends as well.

3.  Change the Privacy Setting to Widen Your Audience

If your privacy setting is set to “Friends” then only your friends can see the post along with the friends of someone you might’ve tagged in the post. This is fine for most items you want to share. 

But what if you’ve written a blog post that you want to be seen by as many people as possible? Consider changing the privacy setting to “Public.” This means that anyone can see the post, even people outside of Facebook.

The process is simple: in the status window, click on “Friends.” A drop-down menu will appear. From there you can select which audience you would like to have access to this post. You can read more about Facebook privacy settings here. NOTE: once you’ve changed your privacy settings it becomes the default setting for all future posts. You can change the setting again easily simply by following this procedure again.

4.  Like Every Comment on Your Post

My friend Dave Awl is a social media specialist who founded a company called Awlpoint. He is also the author of, Facebook Me! A Guide to Socializing, Sharing, and Promoting on Facebook.

He explains the importance of likes, comments, tags, and shares — what Facebook used to call “edges” — in helping your posts rank higher in your friends’ news feeds. Simply put, the more “edges” your post has, the more likely it is to be seen by a larger number of people.

According to Dave, “Every time you Like or comment on a Facebook posting, you’re essentially voting for it to be seen by more people.”

The takeaway? Like every comment someone makes on your post. Each Like creates an edge and each edge increases the likelihood of more people seeing your post.

5.  Comment on Your Own Posts

Comments rank higher than Likes in Facebook’s algorithm. So, whenever appropriate, respond to your friends’ comments with comments of your own. The more engaging the discussion, the more Facebook will reward you with greater visibility.

Play around with these five strategies. Experiment. I think you’ll be pleased with how quickly you can increase the engagement with your posts.

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Why are my posts not being seen?

How do I know if my Facebook posts are being seen?