When you share content on Facebook, you have the option to share it just to your profile or page, or you can share it to your News Feed. Sharing to your News Feed means the content will show up in the feeds of all your friends and followers, allowing it to reach a much wider audience.
What is the Facebook News Feed?
The Facebook News Feed is the constantly updating list of stories you see when you log into Facebook. It includes posts, photos, videos, links, and more that have been shared by your friends, family, groups you’ve joined, pages you’ve liked, and advertisers.
When someone you’re connected to on Facebook shares something, it has the potential to show up in your News Feed. The Facebook algorithm determines what content appears at the top of your News Feed based on things like your past interactions, popularity of posts, paid promotions, and more.
How does sharing to feed work?
When you go to make a post on Facebook from your profile or page, you’ll see two options:
- Share now
- Share to feed
Tapping “Share now” will share the content just to your profile or page. Only people who actively visit your profile or page will see it.
Tapping “Share to feed” posts the content to your News Feed. From there, it has the potential to be seen by all your friends and followers. However, it’s not guaranteed they will all see it.
Why share to feed?
Here are some of the main reasons you may want to share content to your Facebook feed rather than just your profile:
- Increased reach – Sharing to your feed allows a much wider audience to potentially see your post.
- Higher engagement – When more people see your post, it will likely get more reactions, comments, and shares.
- Virality – Posts shared to feed have the chance to go “viral” as friends share them with their own networks.
- Traffic – You can drive more traffic to websites, blogs, or other content by sharing links to your feed.
- Awareness – Sharing content related to your business, brand, or organization boosts awareness.
- Lead generation – Sharing offers, events, and other valuable content to your feed generates more leads.
Best practices for sharing to feed
To get the most out of sharing content to your Facebook feed, keep these tips in mind:
- Post consistently – Don’t overshare, but posting daily or a few times a week ensures you stay top of mind.
- Post at optimal times – The best times to post on Facebook are mid-week around 1-4 PM when engagement is highest.
- Share a variety of content – Mix up your posts with photos, videos, links, questions, events and more.
- Engage with your audience – Don’t just broadcast out content, interact with those who comment and share.
- Analyze performance – Use Facebook Insights to see what types of posts work best for your audience.
- Promote if necessary – For important posts, you can pay to boost their reach in feeds.
Should you always share to feed?
Sharing everything to your feed isn’t advisable. Here are some instances where you may want to just share content to your profile or page:
- Personal updates – Minor life updates are better just for your close connections.
- Controversial topics – Avoid politics, religion and other controversial posts in your feed.
- Too much promotional content – Don’t share every product update or sale to your feed.
- Incorrect information – Double check accuracy before sharing articles or information broadly.
- Private information – Be cautious about oversharing private details publicly in your feed.
In general, evaluate whether a post would provide value to and engage your broader audience before sharing it to feed. The feed works best for your most important updates you want to reach the maximum number of people.
How Facebook controls reach of feed posts
It’s important to understand that just because you share something to feed doesn’t guarantee all your friends and followers will see it. Facebook’s algorithm controls what appears in each person’s feed.
Factors that influence whether Facebook shows your posts in other feeds include:
- Post content – Photos, videos and links tend to get higher reach than text-only posts.
- Post quality – Well-written, interesting posts perform better than mundane updates.
- Past engagement – Posts from friends who people often engage with are prioritized.
- Comment/Share – When people interact with your post, it signals it’s resonating.
- Paid promotion – You can pay to increase the number of people who see a post.
- Follower count – Posts from accounts with more followers tend to have higher reach.
So while sharing to feed opens up the potential for more eyeballs, nothing is ever guaranteed. Experiment to see what works for building engagement and reach with your unique audience.
Other feed sharing options
In addition to sharing your own updates to feed, there are a couple other ways to get content into your friends’ feeds:
- Sharing others’ public posts – You can share public updates from friends, pages, groups, events, etc. to your own feed. This exposes them to your unique friend network.
- Cross-posting – Facebook lets you connect accounts to cross-post updates from one page to another. For example, you can post to a Facebook Page and share to a personal profile feed simultaneously.
Analytics for feed sharing
Facebook provides analytics to help understand how your feed posts are performing. In Facebook Insights, look at metrics like:
- Reach – Number of unique people who saw the post.
- Impressions – Total times your post was seen in feeds.
- Engagement rate – Percentage who interacted vs just saw it.
- Clicks – For links, how many were clicked.
- Reactions – How many likes, shares, comments, etc. the post got.
- Audience – Demographics like location, age, gender of who saw your posts.
Analyze these metrics over time, and for different types of posts, to refine your feed sharing strategy for maximum results.
Conclusion
Sharing to your Facebook feed opens up the possibility of reaching a much wider group of people compared to just posting to your profile. While not everything needs to be shared to feed, it can be an effective way to boost engagement, increase awareness, drive traffic, and achieve other goals using the power of social media.
Pay attention to when your followers are most active, the type of content that resonates best, and be thoughtful about what will provide value to your broader audience. With smart feed sharing tactics, you can grow and engage your community on Facebook.