Thousands of Facebook page fans and only a handful of likes, shares and comments – sound familiar? After all that time you’ve spent reading about the greatest Facebook marketing tricks and ways to get your fans to engage with you, and you’re doing everything right – you just can’t seem to get more people to click “Like”, and shares and comment seem more and more like mission impossible. It can’t be that they don’t like what you’re putting out – it’s all positive and engaging, not offensive, by all standards the content you’re publishing is shareable.

And well, you’re probably right. Even if you’re doing it all by the book in terms of selecting the content, finding the voice that your audience loves and choosing the right time of the day, you’re probably not taking one thing into consideration:

How many people actually see your Facebook Page updates?

Officially according to Facebook, Facebook page updates reach about 16% of fans on average. In reality, most Facebook page updates fall into the average of 7% daily!  That means that only 7 out of 100 fans will see whatever you post on your Wall, status updates, images, videos, links, etc.

Don’t you just hate when you realize that your efforts are, for the biggest part, in vain? 93 out of 100 people won’t see that carefully crafted status update nor that link that you are trying to get them to click on. Or 930 out of 1000. And so on – no matter how many fans your page has, the percentage of those who statistically won’t see it is huge.

Luckily, you can do something about it.

First tip: Do you know how well you’re doing now?

Statistical data is one thing, but your actual numbers can be well below or beyond that 7% mark. This is pretty easy to find out – unless you’re using Sponsored Stories, but that’s another scenario. Just go to your Facebook Insights and check the numbers of your reach. To be more accurate, take the numbers from the last 30 days and take the average; then divide the number you got by the number of your fans – and there you go, something to start from.

The simplest way to increase engagement! (and pretty effective too)

Images! Facebook users love images, and Facebook loves what their users love. Facebook EdgeRank (what determines whether your content will reach a greater number of people) prefers visual to textual content. So yes, funny and meaningful status updates are all fine, but you can accompany them with an image for better visibility, or write them across the image (all it takes is two minutes of your time and basic Photoshop skills, or even simple Paint).

Status updates, quotes, practically anything you can publish as text – you can publish as an image as well. They’re more likely to be seen and read than the plain text updates (although you don’t want to forget about those either), and they don’t take time to be seen as the video content does.

Second tip: Stimulate the engagement, it’s not as difficult as you may think.

Increased interaction also influences your EdgeRank, and it’s up to you to create it – your Facebook page fans won’t get activated by themselves. This doesn’t require you to be online all the time, nor to spend large amounts of money on sweepstakes and contest prizes; it doesn’t even require that you be insanely creative – you can look around, see what others are doing, modify their idea to suit your audience, and you’re all set.

Some of the most engaging activities on Facebook include:

• Asking a personal question that the fans should answer to by filling in the blank (it has to be personal, because your fans will be delighted to share something about themselves)
• Multiple choice Q&A – even one letter comment (y or n) counts as a comment, don’t forget that!
• Sharing inspirational quotes (people easily relate to them and want to show them to their friends)

In one month, do the above calculation again and see how well you did – for the boost in morale; then just continue with the tips we shared, and add some more – and you’ll do just fine.