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Facebook’s See First Feature: See More of What You Love

Published: August 7, 2015

You understand how money or any other item of value works—the greater the quantity of the item, the less it’s worth. It’s the same with your online real estate. When the web was new, having a site put your business at a major advantage. Now, everyone has a website. It’s not enough to stand out.

Social media has gone through the same growth period, and Facebook is so saturated with pages for various organizations that it is difficult to get your voice heard amongst all the online noise. Facebook uses an algorithm, based in part on the number of likes, to sort which posts are most likely to be seen in a user’s newsfeed. Why is the algorithm necessary? Without it, users would be inundated with so much information, they’d never be able to get through it all. Facebook’s method helps users to see the posts that are most important to them.

So, businesses set out to create posts that catch consumers’ attentions and get more likes. Unfortunately, the growth of Facebook as a medium is a double-edged sword. It generates a larger audience for your message, but also means you are competing to be heard over ever more pages, not to mention the posts users receive from all their friends. Facebook remains valuable as a social media platform, but it is experiencing inflation, and that means your business has to do more to get ROI on your social media marketing. Fortunately, Facebook’s new setting, called See First, can help you to that end.

What is the See First Feature?

See First is the next step in Facebook’s progression toward more user control over the newsfeed. Throughout the years, they’ve tried various ways of allowing users to filter their feed to their preferences. Many times, you want to keep someone on your friends list, but you don’t want to see everything they post. For that, Facebook made an update that allows users to unfollow a person or page while still being friends or liking the page.

Now, See First is the opposite side of the user-control coin. It allows users to select friends or pages for which they would like to see every update. It’s simple. The user goes the person’s profile page or the organization’s page that they want to see all posts for. Under the “Following” or “Liked” drop-down, a choice is available to “See First”. When this option is selected, the user sees every single post made by that person or organization.

 

Once you click See First, a checkmark appears next to that setting, and the “Following” box on friends’ pages reads “See First”.

facebook see first option

facebook see first option_see first

The Advantage of Getting “See First” Clicks

You get three clear advantages from convincing your followers to click See First on your page:

  • More Exposure—Because followers who click See First will see every one of your posts in their feed, you get maximum exposure to the See First audience. In the typical newsfeed, there simply isn’t space for every one of your posts to be seen by every follower. Now, you can guarantee that some of your followers are seeing every single message.
  • Get Your Sales Messages Seen—Typically, overt marketing ranks low on Facebook’s algorithm, and that means most users aren’t seeing explicitly sales-driven posts. However, a follower who opts to click See First for your page is likely a follower who is interested in what you have to offer. That means you’ll be getting your sales messages in front of the audience that is most likely to act on them. A word of caution: even your biggest fans don’t want to be inundated with advertising, so take it easy on these kinds of posts.
  • Users See More of What They Want—See First may make some posts get pushed further down the newsfeed as a person’s favorite friends and brands fill the top of their feed. And, that can be a good thing. Let’s face it, if a user isn’t interested in your brand, it doesn’t matter how often you show up in their feed; they aren’t going to buy your product or service. But, tailoring Facebook to allow users to see more of what they’re really interested in means that when a user does click See First for you, they are a part of your target audience. After all, those are the only people you should really be directing your content to anyway.

Advertising the See First feature for your business may be challenging, but it’s actually similar to any other call to action. You won’t get every follower to click See First for your business, but because you will be making the CTA to your current followers, you are at least advertising the feature to users who already have an interest in your content. Simply encourage followers to click See First if they like what they’ve seen and want more like it in their newsfeed.

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