You are sitting in front of your computer with your facebook and something caught your attention. It is your friend John's photo on your timeline. It seems to be getting a lot of attention. Looking at the likes, it has a lot compared to yours which only seem to get very few. In fact every single posts he makes have a lot of likes and you wish you have the same number of likes as well. You wondered how he does it.
Facebook's like algorithm is what dictates which goes to your timeline. The more activity (by that I mean, how many likes/shares/comments) it has, the more that it will figure in to our timeline. Meaning, the more active a post is, the more that facebook's algorithm thinks that it is of greater value so it puts it on everyone's timeline and thus gets more exposure.
I noticed that I could get more activity by commenting back and liking on each person's comments. Why? Because everytime a person commented on a post, it shows on their timeline, and in return will be reflected on their friend's and yours. When you return the favor by either liking or commenting back, it goes back on top of you and your friend's newsfeed which in turn will be seen by your respective friends.
At first that post will stay at your newsfeed for a little bit but as there are more likes and comments on that post, it will be shown more and longer in both of your friends newsfeed.
Try this experiment. Put up two pictures on your timeline, on one just leave it as is after posting. For the other photo, share it, like every comment and comment on every friends' comments. You will find out that the former will have fewer likes compared to the later as the later will get more noticed due to a more activity.
