If you wonder why nobody sees your social media posts, it isn't because you're doing something wrong. It's because social media promotion is a rigged game.

Social media sites are rich with people who have the potential to like what you're doing. It's very tempting to want to promote your photos or business on social media.

Why Promoting on Social Media Sites is a Hard Nut to Crack

If you're just sharing things with friends, then you're probably in good shape. Social media sites want you to contribute to their environment, since that keeps other users on their environment.

Facebook, Twitter and Instagram don't create content for us to consume. Instead, they build an infrastructure so you'll give them content for free. It's incredibly clever.

However, that desire to grow your audience or have people visit the site where you share your photos probably leaves you feeling frustrated. Why do some people seem to have a large following while others don't?

Success on social media is a tough business.

It takes a considerable amount of effort to develop new material to post on social media daily, if not multiple times per day. Even with automation tools that post on your behalf, it's still a lot of work.

Inevitably, all of that work only benefits the social media site. You see, their only goal is to keep users on the social media site.

Nobody Sees Your Social Media Posts Because Your Followers Aren't Your Followers

Years ago, anyone who followed you on social media would see everything you posted. Then we started hearing about changes to the algorithm. They told us these changes were to show you the things that were most interesting to you.

That's true in a manner of speaking, but it's not honest.

Social media sites show you things that are likely to keep you on their social media site. As a contributor, they want you to post photos, videos, text or anything else that users can consume on the social media platform.

The one thing they don't want you to do is post something that will take a user away from their platform.

That's where the algorithm comes into play. Post a photo or graphic and most of your followers will see it. When you post something with a link to a web site elsewhere on the Internet, then the social media algorithm severely restricts how many of your followers will see that post.

That's because social media sites don't want your followers leaving their site. After all, your followers on social media aren't your followers. They belong to the social media platform.

Buying Ads on Social Media

If you create posts on social media that have links, most of your followers won't see them. However, you'll likely see a note from the social media platform telling you that you can boost the number of people who see your message by paying for an ad.

Here's the deal. If you take visitors away from social media, it's a potential revenue loss for the social media platform. Buying ads offsets that revenue loss.

Facebook and other sites exist to earn revenue. One report I read claimed that Facebook earned about $8 Billion per quarter from digital advertisements.

Now take a closer look at some of the posts you see on Facebook or other social media sites. Notice how many times you see the word “Sponsored” under the person's name. Those are paid ads on Facebook because they want or need to reach you.

For some, sponsored posts help build business. Others claim it's a waste of money. They're probably both right, because every situation is different.

If you aren't buying ads, it's not a surprise that nobody sees your social media posts. The algorithms give preference to those who pay to play. It's a business.

Where Do You Want to Engage Your Visitors?