Organic (as always) is the best.
It’s the best food, best type of content, best everything. And for Facebook, organic is best because it’s free. Who doesn’t love free things?
As free and wonderful as Facebook is though, over the last couple of years they’ve gradually become sneakier with how far your organic reach goes.
Wait, what’s organic reach?
Organic reach is the number of people (whether they’re fans of your page or not) who saw your fabulous content from your page in their own newsfeed without you spending money for them to have seen it.
Facebook have slowly shrunk everyone’s organic reach for two reasons:
- To avoid overcrowding of content on everyone’s newsfeed
- Facebook needs to make money so you have to pay for ads to increase reach
It’s terrible of them and trust me, we’ve all shaken our fists about it. But at the end of the day it makes sense; a business needs to make money and Facebook won’t exist without its users, who will all leave Facebook if there’s nothing for them in their own newsfeeds.
How can I reach my beloved fans?
There are several organic methods that you can practise to help you get back in touch with your fans. However, it’s important to understand that it’s not going to happen overnight. If you’re willing to invest the time and effort into it then you’ll be sure to see results but if you only put half the effort in, you will struggle to see a change.
#1 Quality over quantity
As important as it is to post regularly (usually at least twice a day) it’s even more important that you share decent quality and useful information to your fans. If you post updates and share content more than 5 times a day which isn’t useful for your fans then it could be considered as spam. It’s a harsh truth but if you are all people see in their newsfeed (but it isn’t for the right reason) then you’re more likely to lose fans. If you post relevant content that is easy to digest and is like-able then there’s more chance of your fans seeing it, liking and sharing it.
#2 Encourage interactions
Ask questions. Show some personality.
Facebook’s algorithm likes content that seems to be popular and if you encourage your fans to comment then the algorithm will push your content harder. Friends of your fans may see what their friend had commented on your update with, putting your update in people’s newsfeed who don’t even know you exist. They might even like the content you’re sharing, you could gain another follower! The cycle continues.
#3 Keep it visual
Links with images, image status updates and videos all perform much better than a normal update. If you have relevant pictures, share them. If you have the ability to create and distribute videos at your disposal, definitely do it. It’s been scientifically proven that people respond much better to visual content over text content (the brain transmits 90% of visual information and visuals have 60,000X faster processing speed than text form), so it’s always worth investing in a useful image bank that you can use. There are plenty of sites around now that provide stock photos in a non-stock style fashion. A personal favourite of mine is Unsplash. Or StockSnap. I’m still undecided!
#4 Listen to your Insights
My last blog post in this series explained how to use and understand your Insights tab. Now you need to listen to what it says.
- Post content just before most of your users are online. This gives your content a better chance of standing out to them when they first check their newsfeeds.
- Evaluate what posts worked better – which ones had further reach as well as which ones had more engagement
- Post more of what you know (and learn) your audience likes
#5 Keep it interesting
Don’t speak your industry jargon. Nobody wants to read anything like that whilst perusing their news feed. Keep your use of language light and interesting to draw in those naturally curious minds. However, if on the rare occasion they prefer your precise knowledge delivered with a concise vocabulary, go for it!
It’s also important to not bombard both your timeline and news feeds with paragraphs upon paragraphs. It’s already been proven (see point #3) that people respond better to images and videos instead of bulks of text, so try not to write essays as your updates. Just make sure to be mindful of my do’s and don’ts of what to post on Facebook!
Be realistic
Taking the organic route isn’t going to achieve the dreamy figures you would normally see when you pay for advertising on Facebook, but the methods above are a pretty good starting point to help you get set on the right path to maximising your organic reach.
It’s important to note though, if your fans mostly consist of supportive family and friends then they might not find the content you want to share particularly interesting.This can have a negative effect on your efforts because you might be doing everything else correctly but still aren’t reaping the rewards of your hard work. Having the right audience is just as important as the content you share.
Keep an eye out for my next post…
This is my 4th post in a series of 5 about Facebook and for my next (and last!) post for this series I’m going to give you tips on how to grow your audience, both organically and with paid advertising. If you don’t want to miss my final post in this Facebook series then zoom to the top of the page and on the right in the sidebar you’ll be able to sign up to our awesome newsletter which will drop our latest posts right into your inbox just twice a month, no more!
If you have any questions then I’d love to help you with them – just leave a comment below.
