What Exactly Is Organic Reach On Facebook?
Facebook Organic Reach is the number of people who see your content without paid distribution. It includes people who are shown your posts in their own feed or because their friends have interacted with you.
Paid reach is the people who see your content as a result of paid promotions. It is influenced by your ad targeting options and can also impact how to increase organic reach on Facebook.
The importance of organic reach is that there is a necessity to strengthen a group of loyal followers and customers by posting pertinent content and interconnect with those who connect with your brand.
Why Facebook Organic Reach Is Declining?
- More content: More content is being published than there is news feed space for it to be shown. Every minute, more than 510,000 comments and 293,000 statuses are posted on Facebook.
- Personalized news feeds: Facebook provides the most relevant content to each user. To increase engagement and optimize user experience, content is tailored to each user’s individual interests.
Why You Need To Think About Declining Facebook Organic Reach?
- Nurture More Leads and Organic Conversions
- Reduce the Cost Per Click of Paid Campaigns
- There Are Tons of New (Under-Utilized) Facebook Features
ACCORDING TO MARK ZUCKERBERG, Facebook now prioritizes posts that spark “meaningful interactions” and posts from friends and family. There are other detailed data points that come into play:
- how recently the post was published
- how frequently the publisher posts content
- the number of likes, comments, and shares on the post
- how often the user has interacted with the page posting the update
Like other platforms, Facebook cares the most about its users. It wants to continuously improve their experience with high-quality, relevant content. Overly promotional content doesn’t fare well with users, so Facebook
cracked down on that type of content. In the past, they also cut traffic from publishers in favor of user-generated content.
Here are 20 highly effective ways on how to grow a Facebook page to help you start building your organic reach on Facebook today…
- Don’t Automate Everything. Facebook is a social platform and your brand needs to have a human touch. Don’t just schedule your latest blog links and product updates.
- Don’t Just Promote Products and Services. Facebook is based on interest, not intent. Not every update you send out on your Facebook page should be promotional. Rather, 80% of your updates should be social. Otherwise, users won’t hesitate to click the unlike button on your page (it’s just a click away).
- Don’t Try to Cheat the Facebook Ecosystem. Facebook seriously cracks down on spammers. Stick with the Facebook code and stay in their good graces. It’s a sheer waste of time and money.
- Don’t Build a Fanbase You Can’t Sustain. The brutal truth about a large fanbase – no matter how targeted – is that your reach will automatically be lower. This means that you have to put in extra work to create content that is relevant and useful to several different segments of your audience.
- Post When Your Competitors Are Asleep. You need to consider your location and that of your audience, your audience profile (age, interests, occupation, etc.), the type of content that you create, and the scheduling tools that you have at your disposal.
- Post the Content Your Users Like. Photos have become an unpopular post type with users, and hence, with marketers. My recommendation is to post all types of updates that add value for your fans, be it links, images, polls, Facebook Lives, Facebook Stories, or even Facebook Watch videos.
- Publish Videos Natively on Facebook. Facebook tends to favor video updates, causing media marketers to use more video blog post content. To further engage the video viewers, you can add a call-to-action (CTA) to visit your website or a destination of your choice. This can be included in the final frame, or you can boost the video and use Facebook’s Ad CTA buttons.
- Test Your Posting Frequency. The rule of thumb is to keep it between 1-3 posts/day, depending on your following. Don’t be tempted to post 20 times a day.
- Partner with Other Facebook Pages in Your Niche. Reach out to Facebook Pages having less than 30,000 likes or struck deals with Instagram influencers (having a huge following) to post links to your landing pages.
- Use Word-of-Mouth Marketing to Grow Your Brand. There’s no better way to generate buzz for your brand than to turn your customers, employees, and fans into advocates. Fans of brands who constantly promote your products and content.
- Put Your Email List to Work. Simple social media marketing suggests starting by adding Facebook share buttons to your email newsletters. Some email platforms, like Mailchimp, make this easy. Otherwise, you will need to create an HTML version of your email and create custom code for the share buttons.
- Run Contests to Drive Facebook Organic Reach. Facebook contests are a simple way to increase your presence quickly. But it’s a little more than just luring fans with a free gift.
- Share Posts From Your Facebook Page on Your Facebook Profile. This strategy is for avid Facebook users. You should have at least 1,000+ friends on your personal Facebook profile to drive significant results.
- Drive Organic Facebook Traffic With Hashtags (Used Carefully). Facebook users are prone to hashtag fatigue. Posts with hashtags performed worse than those without. It’s a matter of experimenting with relevant ones to see what works in your industry and for your audience.
- Go Against the Grain to Stand Out. A big piece of the organic reach puzzle is competition. You have to fight for the attention of your audience. Find your differentiating factor and flaunt it. Both your visual and written content should stand out.
- Take Advantage of New Facebook Features. Facebook’s constant app updates are no secret. When you get in on them early, you get the early mover’s advantage. This means that you can master it faster than anyone else and tap into the new capabilities for the benefit of your business.
- Create an Effective Facebook Paid Marketing Strategy. A People can still see your post even though they weren’t targeted through paid distribution. The audience that you pay for may decide to share and engage with the post. In that case, it will gain an organic reach when their audience also engages.
- Harness the Power of Facebook “Dark Posts”. “Dark posts,” otherwise called unpublished posts, are news feed style ads that don’t get published to your news feed. This means that they won’t be found on
your timeline or in your fans’ feed. - Grab Attention and Inspire Action with Persuasive Copy. If you’ve had any success on Facebook, you already know that the creative elements are the variables that matter. You need to test different aspects
of the creative. This includes split testing your copywriting and visual elements to find the highest performing combinations. It will serve you well for both paid promotions and your organic reach. - Focus on Value and Don’t Worry About Reach. The organic reach of your posts on Facebook is like a secondary metric. If you go after reach rather than valuable content, you’ll be trying to game Facebook’s algorithm. Every platform wants to improve the experience of its users and increase engagement.
Facebook Is A Brilliant Marketing Tool
There’s no doubt about that. The number of businesses that actively use the platform continues to increase by millions, year over year. But Facebook is not without its challenges. The influx of published content has led to a downward spiral in organic reach, and the competition for news feed space is fierce. Things that were once done on autopilot, now require significantly more effort and due diligence.
Will organic reach continue to plummet? Or will it improve? Nobody really knows what the future holds for organic reach on Facebook. Either way, our task remains the same. We have to get creative in our social media marketing and provide the highest quality content to our audience.
If you implement these strategies, you’ll be well on your way to improving how to increase organic reach on Facebook. You’ll also be more skilled at navigating Facebook’s ever-changing platform.
What is your Facebook page’s average organic reach? What strategies are you using to combat organic reach decline on Facebook?
At Creative Canvas Media, we keep your best interest in mind. Our teams use industry best practices and current trends to guide you in finding the right digital marketing strategy for your business. If you’re ready to focus on your customers, request a no-obligation demo with one of our local consultants today to learn how we have your digital marketing handled.
