Have you been wondering why your Facebook Page posts only achieve a little percentage of your fans? The reply is EdgeRank, Facebook’s Newsfeed filtering algorithm that decides what updates are important to each user and should be shown as well as those that arent important and are ignored. We recently posted a wreck-course in EdgeRank that you can read here.

For Facebook Page marketers, its important to not only comprehend EdgeRank, but to actively work to improve it- which is why Ive created this list of 7 easy ways to increase your pages Rank:

1. Post Consistently But NOT Too Much!

Its easy and obvious but many Facebook page owners fail at this (at one end of the spectrum or the other). Don’t post enough and you won’t achieve your fans as 95%+ are never going back to your page after liking it. Post too often and you run the risk of irritating your fans, or even worse, cannibalizing one of your better posts. We recommend posting 2-3 times per day with at least 4 hours between each post. For those who cant locate the time (or quality content) to do this, posting at least 2-3 times per week is a perfect must.

Side note: We’ve created PageTips for you a quick and free report on how well your page is doing.

2. Post Engaging, Relevant Content NOT Constant Self-Promotion

Its not enough just to post consistently your posts must be high-quality. Before you post an update, put yourself in the shoes of one of your fans. Ask yourself, Would you care about this? Would you share this with your friends?. Facebook recently gave their thoughts on engaging content, and I talked about this in a previous post as well. To sum up both articles, you shouldn’t be using Facebook posts for sales or self-promotion you should be using them to cultivate a community.

3. Keep it Short & Sweet!

Your fans dont desire to read essays in their Newsfeeds. Trust me, they dont! Better yet, dont trust me trust Vitrue and their recent study (also pictured under). Also, Ive been informed by a source at Facebook that 90 characters is the sweet spot, with posts less than 90 characters garnering about 80% more engagement than those that are longer.

4. Post Photos and Videos

The recommendation anyone who knows all about Facebook page marketing gives, and rightfully so post photos and videos rather than regular status updates. You can find studies that give conflicting advice regarding Facebook page marketing in beautiful much any other topic moreover this. In this case, absolutely everyone agrees. In addition, with Facebooks redesign of the Newsfeed rolling out in the next few days with larger photos (as reported on TechCrunch), those who post photos will only benefit more.

5. ASK for what you want

It sounds simple and it is but it works like a charm. Calls-to-action work tremendously well on Facebook. Ask your fans to fill-in-the-blank, provide a caption for a photo, or share their thoughts on a new product idea. Ask them to like your post if they agree with something you posted or comment on why they dont agree. Facebook outlines some of these examples in their FAQ Section. Check out an example pictured below,

6. Offer EXCLUSIVES (Content, Discounts, Specials)

Whether you like it or not, this is why the immense majority of your fans actually clicked the like button they want some sort of reward, benefit, or discount. Amy Porterfield details this in a blog post back in October of 2010, but its secure to say not much has changed since then. Facebook Page marketers no longer have any excuses not to do this, as Facebook has made it quite simple with Facebook Offers.

7. Find the right time to post for YOUR AUDIENCE

This is one of the toughest things to do, as it inevitably involves lots of testing and lots of sifting through Insights data in order to actually attain results but its definitely worth it. The first step toward doing this is actually understanding your audience. You need to be able to solution these questions.

Where are they located? How old are they?

What would their typical day be like? (Which ultimately leads to..)

When will they maybe be on Facebook?