Facebook Posts keep disappearing?

In early days, any update on Facebook made it into the news feed, just like Twitter. This allowed users to follow and respond to every little post by friends and family. The same was true for any Facebook Page of a brand or product.

This however, is not the case anymore. Facebook now has algorithms that are responsible to determine which post shows up into your news feed, which it thinks will appeal to you as the most interesting story.

The truth is that not all people go through every news feed. Some people even scroll through news feeds in a jiffy, just to glance over them and not really interact with any posts.

This behavior, however affects Facebook. Being a social media platform, it is the best interest of Facebook that its users may find content which is not predictable and which makes their news feed interesting and entertaining, so that every time a user checks the news feed, he may find something new and may want to keep coming back on Facebook.

There are various factors that determine which Post should appear in your news feed. Some of them are listed below;

  • Your interaction with the friend or page in terms of comments, shares etc.
  • If the Post is marked as spam or page is unliked by certain people, due to a certain post.
  • Your friend’s engagement with the post.
  • Other people’s response to your post, which may show similar interests or are from same region.
  • When was the post published? If the post has been old, it may not appear on news feed or may get lost among other posts since news feeds show newer posts first.

And although, there are certain beliefs floating around too, like Facebook is not showing all Posts in news feed, to encourage people to do more sponsored posts (Sponsored posts are basically paid posts for which Facebook charge the author of the post).

If you have a business Page or other professional Page, where your posts’ reach is very important and you are concerned about this, you may want to consider sponsored posts. Sponsored posts even though paid may be suitable for some, since the cost can be easily justified with its reach to the target audience like your followers, or friends of followers etc.

There are however, certain other things too you can do at your end, to ensure that you get to see most of the Posts from friends and family, or any other Page you may have liked on Facebook. Things that will also affect your posts from appearing in your friend’s news feed.

1). Your Friend’s Status in your Friend List

Many times we may unfollow a friend or even unfriend them permanently. This will prevent you from gaining access to their Posts and other information and the same is applicable to them. If someone has unfollowed you on Facebook, they may not see your Posts. This can be changed however, when they again start following you. However, if they unfriend you, it’ll require your acceptance to their invitation. And only upon your acceptance, they will be able to see your Posts, when they again start following you.

Therefore, it is worth to check if you have unfollowed / unfriend your friend or not and ask them too to check the same. You can find your friend’s status easily by checking your Facebook friend list. If they do not appear in your friend list or vice versa, both you and your friend can’t access Facebook Post.

2). Check if you are following Facebook Page you liked, or not

Just like your Friends, the Facebook Pages you like must be followed too. Liking a Page doesn’t means that you will see the Posts and other updates in your news feed. You need to Like and Follow the Page to see the Posts and updates.

If you have your own Facebook Page, whether it is for a brand or product or business, you should ask people to check the same to ensure that your posts are shown when they show their interest by clicking on ‘Like’ and ‘Follow’ button.

3). Filters, Blocks, Snooze and Restrictions

Facebook provides many controls in form of filters and blocks, which may affect the posts from appearing in the news feed. So, it is a good idea to check your news feed settings, if you may have put in filters on certain types of posts from appearing in your news feed. Also blocking certain posts or certain people may prevent their posts from appearing in your news feed. Removing filters and block may not only make you see more posts, but may also help in locating older posts, that may have vanished. Removing filters and blocks will thus make those old posts to reappear in your news feed.

Sometimes we just snooze the posts from friends or Pages we may not like. These posts will reappear on their own, after the snooze period of 30 days is over. However you can also alter the snooze settings in you Facebook account ‘Preferences’, to again view their post before the end of snooze period.

Last check is applicable for Facebook Page owners only, who want to ensure that their Facebook posts and updates are appearing to all of their followers. You need to check, if you have put in any restrictions for your Page content or not. This restriction can be in form of age or location and will prevent your posts from getting displayed to the restricted audience and can be removed by editing your Facebook Page settings, under ‘General’ tab.  You need to ensure that your Page is visible / shown to everyone for larger viewership.

4). Privacy Settings of your Facebook account

Beside your Facebook profile privacy settings, Facebook also gives you the option to alter privacy settings of individual posts which you have shared or which you are seeing on your news feed.

If you have checked the option to show your post to ‘friends’ only or ‘friends except’ option, where you can exclude a friend or friends, or ‘specific friends’ your posts will not appear in the news feed of people you have left out. Again if the post is not shared publically, it will not appear in the news feed.

Similarly, you can hide posts from specific friends or remove their posts completely. This will affect your news feed and similar other posts from your friend will not appear to you.

Likewise, if your friend too may alter the privacy settings of a post you shared or may denies you access to his or her posts, those posts will no longer appears in their / your news feed.

And although this may be done for specific posts only, Facebook will automatically stop you and your friend from showing similar posts. A quick fix to solve this is to share a post and tag your friend or put in a comment on their posts. This will make similar posts to re-appear again in your news feed.

5). Post Quality

Facebook values good content posts and will always give them priority over spammy looking irrelevant posts.

Better content in posts will also result in better people engagement since the post will provide better value to them. Once people start liking and reading your posts, Facebook will throw more of such posts in their news feed due to its relevancy.

Therefore quality of posts is equally important in determining its visibility. If some of your friends or some Facebook Page(s) your are following, are publishing crappy posts, chances are they may hardly be visible due to influx of better content posts by other friends and Facebook Pages you follow.

Similarly, if you want your posts to be regularly shown in news feed, focus on quality and not on length of the post.

Once your posts is liked and shared by a good no. of users, your content will automatically be prioritized by Facebook.

The key is not to be a spammer but to make your posts and updates useful to others. Short posts, images and videos appear to be better than long irrelevant posts.

6). Technical Errors

If you have checked on all the above points and you are sure that the post was not deleted and is still not appearing in the news feed, chances are it may happen due to a technical glitch in Facebook.

Sometimes there are internal errors in Facebook, which may prevent posts from appearing. Usually these problems and errors are solved on their own by Facebook. You can always check for those posts at a later time.

However, remember to log out of Facebook account, clear your brower’s history and then login again into Facebook.

If there were any technical glitches that were preventing the display of post, you can be rest assure that they will gone by then and the post in question will re-appear again.