Last week, it was revealed that organic Facebook reach has decreased by 42% over the last few months; a pretty dramatic drop. Organic engagement is notoriously a tough nut to crack with Facebook marketing. More and more emphasis has been placed on paid-for advertising to gain decent reach which can prove difficult, and taxing on the bank account, especially for smaller companies or start-up brands.
There are, however, some quickfire ways to increase your organic Facebook reach and get your content seen by more people. Here’s our checklist:
Audience Optimisation
Paid-for targeting of your posts can really help to get your content under the nose of those you really want. But there is a little known free optimisation tool on Facebook that can really help expand your reach. Audience Optimisation is only automatically available to pages that have 5,000 likes or more but can easily be switched on for newer pages; simply visit your Settings and turn it on.
Audience Optimisation allows you to select a preferred audience by interest, or restrict your audience by age, location, gender or language. It’s not as in-depth as the targeted boosted posts but it’s a quick, free way to make sure your posts are being seen by those within a specified demographic from your page likes. To make the most of this free feature, simply write your post and then select the small target icon that should show up underneath the text box.
Tagging
Another quick and easy to way to expand your post’s reach organically is to tag any relevant brands, third parties or people. If you’re an e-commerce brand shouting about a brand new product you’re now stocking, for example, see if that brand has a Facebook account and if so, be sure to tag them in your post. This means the content will appear on their page and you could therefore be reaching out to a whole new fan base. If you’re sharing an article from a third party platform, a blog or an online newspaper perhaps, tag the publication or even the journalist. It’s a really easy, fast and simple way to gain more traction.
Encourage engagement
The way that Facebook’s algorithm works is that content with more likes and comments gets sent directly to people’s newsfeeds. Therefore, encouraging your audience to like and comment on your posts could mean more people see it. Perhaps run a competition whereby people have to comment on the post to enter? Or maybe encourage your fans to like a post if they want to find out more about your product? Just be careful of Facebook’s rather strict guidelines to contests; for example, you can’t run a competition where you ask people to share your post in order to enter.
Promote on other channels
Facebook itself might be a major promotional tool for you but it needs its own promotion at times too, especially if you’re not getting the reach you’d like. If you have other social media channels, such as Twitter or LinkedIn, shout about your Facebook presence there and direct people to head over and like your page. If you’re running a Facebook competition or giveaway, why not include that in your email newsletters and send people to your profile to enter? Promoting your own Facebook presence is vital to not only gain you better reach but encourage a bigger audience too.
Want to find out more about improving your social media and how best to use your platforms for business? Call our Social Media team today on 01403 261491 or email [email protected]