How I Gained 13K Views in a Week—By Actually Listening to Facebook’s Advice

byshawn8183

203 followers

1 month ago

You know what’s funny? When I first started, I didn’t even want to use Facebook. I thought it was overcrowded, outdated, and just not the place to grow an audience in 2025. But here I am, running three different Facebook pages, testing ads vs. organic growth, and proving to myself that Facebook still works—if you use it right.

And this past week? I gained 13,438 views—without running a single ad.

How? I finally did something I had never really done before—I followed Facebook’s own recommended posting plan and stuck to it for an entire week. Turns out, they actually know what they’re talking about.

Here’s exactly how I did it.

The Three Pages Experiment: Finding What Works

Let me back up a bit. I’m currently testing three different Facebook growth strategies across three different pages:

1. The Hybrid Page (This One) – A mix of paid ads and organic content. One month I run ads, the next month I go all organic to see how much free traffic I can generate.
2. The Ad-Focused Page – Completely driven by paid ads. I want to see if throwing money at it actually builds a long-term audience.
3. The Organic-Only Page – No ads, just pure SEO, engagement, and content strategies to grow naturally.

This blog is about the hybrid page, where I had just finished running ads in February. Now, in March, I turned them off and had to rely purely on organic traffic to keep the momentum going.

The Strategy: A Three-Month Growth Plan

This wasn’t just a random experiment—I started this strategy at the beginning of the year, testing a structured three-month plan:

• January: Ran Facebook ads to gain traction, build an initial audience, and test engagement.

• February: Turned off ads completely to see how much of my audience would stick around.

• March: Focused entirely on organic growth, engagement, and optimizing content strategy.

This means that by the time March rolled around, I had no ad spend helping my page. It was all about seeing if I could sustain and even grow my reach without paying for it.

And after one full week of Facebook’s posting plan, I proved that I could.

The Challenge: Can I Keep the Growth Going Without Ads?

I knew from past experience that when you stop running ads, engagement usually drops. That’s just how the game works. So my goal for this week was to prove that organic posting alone could still drive traffic.

The plan? Follow Facebook’s posting recommendations exactly and track the results.

What Facebook Wanted Me to Post:

• 25 Facebook posts
• 3 Facebook stories
• 23 Instagram posts
• 3 Instagram stories

At first, I wasn’t sure if this would make a difference, but I committed to posting every single day and making sure my content hit the right notes.

Step 1: Why I Post Without Links (And Why You Should Too)

You might be thinking, wait, if you’re not posting links, how do you make money?

It’s a fair question. Isn’t the whole point of marketing to drive people to your offers?

Here’s the answer: Facebook doesn’t like sending people off its platform. If you post links in every post, your reach will drop. Facebook’s algorithm ranks content based on engagement, and posts with external links don’t perform nearly as well as posts that keep people on the platform.

So instead of forcing links into every post, I do this:

• Ninety percent of my posts have no links—just engaging content that sparks curiosity.
• I only drop links a few times per week, usually within a valuable post, so it feels natural.
• I let my audience do the searching for me.

On my Facebook page, I have five key links that lead to my websites and landing pages. So even if I don’t put a link in every post, people who are engaged and want more will click through to my page—and find my links on their own.

By avoiding link overload, I get way more reach and engagement, which in turn drives more people to my page—and ultimately, to my offers.

Step 2: Posting the Right Content, Not Just Anything

Posting a lot is one thing, but posting the right kind of content is what actually moves the needle. So I broke my content into three key categories that I knew would perform well:

1. Wisdom Posts – Short, thought-provoking insights. These give people something to reflect on.
2. Engagement Questions – Polls, theories, and controversial questions. These get people commenting.
3. Guidance Posts – Valuable content like tips, strategies, or thought-provoking ideas.

By mixing these three types, every post served a purpose—either to spark discussion, provide value, or build curiosity.

Step 3: Hitting Facebook’s Goals Increased My Posting Frequency

Originally, I was posting three times per day—and that worked well. But because I was following Facebook’s suggested goals, I quickly realized that to hit their benchmarks, I needed to post five to six times per day.

Here’s how I adjusted:

• Three main posts per day (morning, afternoon, and evening).
• Two additional “light” posts like memes, quick thoughts, or engagement-driven questions.
• One bonus post on high-traffic days.

The more I posted, the more Facebook rewarded me with reach and engagement—because I was playing into what their algorithm wants.

Step 4: The Results After One Week

After seven days of consistent, high-quality posting and engagement, here’s what happened:

• 13,438 views (a 961.5 percent increase)
• 9,400 reach (an 804.6 percent increase)
• 378 interactions (a 1,100 percent increase)

And the craziest part? I did this without running a single ad.

Final Takeaways: What I Learned From This Test

• Facebook’s posting plan actually works. They suggest these post amounts for a reason.
• Engagement is the key to reach. The more you interact, the more people Facebook shows your posts to.
• Avoiding link spam helps rank your posts higher. Keeping people on Facebook leads to more reach.
• Increasing posting frequency can accelerate growth. Facebook favors pages that post more often.
• A structured ad-to-organic transition works. January ads built momentum, February tested stability, and March proved organic growth could hold strong.

This journey has been one of the best learning experiences I’ve had in social media marketing. If I can keep this momentum going, then I know that Facebook is still one of the most powerful platforms out there.

Would you try this strategy on your own page? Let me know what you think.

- Shawn