Getting people to share your Facebook posts can be difficult, especially if you don’t have a large following. Even with minimal followers, some posts get shared more than others, mostly because the reader can relate to the story. Here are 10 reasons why your Facebook posts aren’t being shared. They should help you stay away from unpopular content and build your following.
Key Takeaways
✅ People share what they like, agree with, or feel inspired by. A post that bores your audience or splits it down the middle can collect comments and still get very few shares.
✅ Timing decides who is around to see a post. Check your Page Insights for the hours and days your own fans are active before you schedule anything.
✅ Posting too often spreads your reach thin. Every extra post in a day competes with your others for the same followers’ attention, so more posts can mean fewer shares on each one.
✅ Aim every post at the audience you actually have. Niche news that only excites you, or a Page promoted to the wrong demographic, reaches people with no reason to pass it on.
✅ Small Pages need more fans before posts can spread. With only a handful of followers, even a strong post has too few eyes on it, so growing Page likes comes first.
✅ Variety keeps followers paying attention. A feed of near-identical updates, or content people have already seen elsewhere, gets tuned out, so mix post types, images, and video.
1. The Content is Boring
If people find what you post uninteresting, they won’t share it. Facebook’s algorithm determines what everyone sees from their “liked” pages. Posts with high engagement are shown to more people organically in their news feed. So with more views, you’ll get more shares.
2. People Disagree with the Post
To share a post, the reader needs to like, be inspired by, or agree with the content. You can see this with political Facebook posts. You may see a lot of comments, but relatively few likes and shares. While comments play a role in how many people see the post, it’s a much smaller role than a “like” or “share”. “Shareable” content is content that others see themselves posting and so they quickly move to the share button.
3. It’s the Wrong Time of Day
Sometimes, the lack of post engagement comes down to the time of day you post. It’s common sense that posting at 2 a.m. local time won’t get you a lot of attention. Beyond that, the published studies on the best time to post on Facebook disagree with each other. Each one looked at a different set of accounts over a different period, so none of them was measured on your fans. Your Facebook Page Insights will tell you the times of day your fans are most often on Facebook. Use this!
4. Posting Too Often
Frequent posting is a good thing when you’re keeping your page active with one or more posts a day. Regular posting shows Facebook that you’re maintaining your presence, and it’ll help your posts reach more people. If you’re posting 7+ times a day and expect to get lots of engagement on all your posts, it probably won’t happen. Facebook’s News Feed algorithm will filter out most of your posts, and people who see your updates may ignore them.
5. The Post is a Niche News Story
Something exciting or important to you may not be appealing to your customers. For example, people who like Apple’s official Facebook page may share a news story detailing when the iPhone 7 will come out, but they may gloss over a story about the iPhone 7 gaining .4 megapixels on the front camera. A small number of camera enthusiasts might share that story, but most consumers just don’t care enough about something so niche that they would share it.
6. You’re Targeting the Wrong Audience
This happens when you promote your page using bad demographic data (or no data at all) to determine your target market. The people who like your page and see your posts may not be as interested or engaged as someone in your target demographic. Zeroing in on the people most likely to interact with your posts is the key to getting more shares.
7. There Aren’t Enough Eyes on the Post
Even the most interesting posts need a bit of attention before they go viral. If you have a small number of followers, focus more on growing the number of “likes” (fans) on your page as opposed to creating posts and hoping they reach a broad audience.
8. The Majority of Your Posts are Extremely Similar
When people see the same thing over and over again, they tend to tune it out. Even if the posts aren’t exactly the same, if they’re similar enough that people think “Oh, that again?”, you’ll need to switch it up to get people interacting with your posts. Are you using different post types, large, vivid images and video, and not just text?
9. You’re Posting on the Wrong Days
Just like posting at the wrong hour of the day can limit the number of shares, posting on the wrong days can do the same thing. It might seem like people spend the same amount of time each day on Facebook but that can vary! It’s critical to review your Page Insights because your audience may dip on Monday’s, be active on Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday. If you miss the most active days, you can be missing out! Study the data Facebook gives you for your Page to find out.
10. It’s Been Posted Before
If you’re re-posting something that you’ve posted before or has appeared somewhere else, there’s an excellent chance your post won’t get many shares. Nobody wants to be the person who shares what everyone else is sharing.
Frequently Asked Questions About Getting More Facebook Shares
A like is a quiet nod, while a share puts the post in front of the sharer’s own friends with their name on it. People share content they would be comfortable posting themselves. A post that is only pleasant, or that divides opinion, tends to stop at a like or a comment.
Look back over several weeks of your own posts and note the hours and days when the ones that got shared went out. Then test those windows on purpose, because general studies average across other people’s accounts and your fans keep their own schedule.
Often enough that the Page looks active, but not so often that your own posts compete for the same followers. Add posts gradually and watch the shares each one earns, then pull back once extra posts start dragging that number down.
There is no set number. A Page with only a handful of fans rarely has enough people seeing a post for it to start spreading. Put the early effort into growing Page likes, and judge your content once more people are actually seeing it.
Start Getting More Facebook Shares Today
As you can see, posting is an art with science! Pick the one reason on this list that sounds most like your Page and fix it this week. If shares are low across the board, start with the data. Pull up your Page Insights, find the hours and days your fans are active, and move your next five posts into those windows. If a few posts get shared and most don’t, put the winners side by side with the rest. Look for what they have in common in topic, format, and audience.
Once those fixes are in place, keep the feed varied. Rotate in formats from these Facebook post ideas whenever your updates start to look alike. Shares do the most for a business when each post is part of a wider Facebook marketing strategy aimed at your customers. And to see how Facebook fits alongside search and email, grab a free preview of Digital Threads. Neal Schaffer’s book shows how to bring social, search, and email together into one digital marketing strategy.
