8 Tips for Increasing Your Organic Reach on Social Media
When it comes to increasing organic reach on Social media, Facebook is the first platform that comes to mind. Interestingly, Facebook is also the first platform that comes to mind when discussing the decline of organic reach.
Everywhere you go, organic reach is plummeting because paid advertisements are getting more preference. As a result, marketers are slowly removing organic reach from the equation. However, this is your chance to capitalize on the decreasing competition.
Social media is an excellent platform for boosting your sales and increasing your business value. As organic reach is slowly declining, you can leverage this opportunity because your competitors might not be aiming for trending hashtags and value addition. So, you have plenty of room to try new things. If you want to know how you can increase your organic reach, you are in the right place.
In this blog post, I will share 8 tips for increasing organic reach on social media, along with a few creative ways you can target the masses. So, without further delay, let’s begin.
Why Is Organic Reach Decreasing?
Before you combat the decrease in organic reach, you need to understand why organic reach is decreasing. After all, you can’t fix anything without knowing how it broke.
Most people argue that social media platforms want your money, and this is somewhat true. They want your money just like any other business, so what’s the harm? However, there is another story behind this radical change where organic reach is decreasing.
A Reddit user, Brian Cristiano, explained the reason behind the decrease in organic reach in his post. While this Reddit post addresses the main points about Facebook advertisement, it also reveals how this change is in line with Mark Zuckerberg’s vision.
Social media platforms want to promote engaging content above all else, and this priority informs their News Feed algorithm, which is similar to Google’s algorithm.
Social Media SEO
This term might sound ridiculous, but it will soon become a buzzword. Social media is promoting its content through its own SEO techniques. The social media algorithm promotes a positive user experience by showing your content to 1% of your followers. If this small pool of followers engages with your content, it gains more attention and slowly goes viral. Moreover, the magnitude and frequency of like, share, and comments also predict the chances of your post going viral. If there are many people quickly liking, sharing, or commenting on your post, the Social media algorithm will deem it fit to place your post in the news feed of your friends and their friends.
Although the information mentioned above is critical, it isn’t much help unless you know what social media considers engaging. Knowing how to create interesting content is the key to determining how social media algorithms work. Below I have shared 8 ways to create engaging content that possess the potential to go viral.
8 Ways to Increase Organic Reach for Facebook and Other Social Media
Going Viral on social media is a dream for many businesses and even individuals. The amount of fame and prestige social media serves is far greater than what any other medium can deliver. On top of this, viral social media posts increase organic reach, and businesses gain a positive brand image (If the viral content is positive for your brand).
1. Choose the Right Social Media Platform
Most businesses assume social media works like conventional marketing. The more ground they cover, the better; however, this is not the case with social media marketing. Your target audience may not be on every social media platform, so why should you? Businesses that assume social media reach is synonymous with creating profiles on all social platforms need to rethink their social media strategy. The best way to know which social platforms your target audience uses is by asking them.
- Simply Ask
The best way to figure out which social media platform your target audience uses is by asking them. You can use surveys, questionnaires, and emails to inquire about the social media platform your audience uses. You can also give them a call about their experience with your business and ask for their social media during the conversation.
- Your Share Count
If you have a website, you might have a blog page, and if you have a blog page, you should have a share button. Share buttons allow readers to promote your blog if they like what they read. You can check where your blog posts were shared the most. This will tell you the social media platform your target audience uses.
2. Post Evergreen Content
Many business owners and marketers wonder, “How to increase organic traffic on Facebook?” My answer to them is – create evergreen content.
While “create evergreen content” might sound like a vague term, it’s very straightforward. Since social media is populated with humorous, serious, informative, and all sorts of content, it might seem impossible for you to see your post get an organic reach boost. However, if you avoid posting content with an expiry date, you might successfully increase organic reach.
Content with an expiry date is limited to a season, day, or event. Though you might get a short term organic reach boost, its limited life will negatively impact your social media reach.
Facebook pays special attention to the variations in organic reach. If your Facebook page gets a temporary organic boost and your organic reach starts plummeting after your post is no longer valid for your target audience, Facebook won’t share your content as much as it used to. So, make sure your social media posts are not designed to increase organic reach. Instead, your posts should value your target audience so your business can grow at a sustainable pace.
3. Posting Out of Control Won’t Help
Facebook has said that each user is entitled to 1,500 stories per day according to the number of content posted each day. However, to increase engagements, this number is reduced to 300. This shows that posting more than once or twice a day won’t increase your organic reach. Instead of posting every day, you should create quality content and schedule twice or thrice a week. This is the case for quality over quantity, and because Facebook has plenty of social media posts to show its users, your post spamming will have adverse effects on your business.
4. Organic Post Targeting
The best strategy for increasing organic traffic on Facebook is through organic post targeting. Marketers know that Facebook has the option for organic post targeting, but they don’t know how to use it. There might be many people following your Facebook page, but not all of them will help increase your organic reach. Moreover, only a handful of your followers might be interested in your business or react to your posts. In this case, you can use organic post targeting to increase your Facebook page’s organic reach and select an audience similar to those who have previously engaged with your content. This strategy for increasing organic reach can ensure your content reaches the right audience and also informs the Facebook algorithm about the category of followers who will show interest in your content.
There are eight options you can use for organic post targeting on Facebook; these are:
- Gender
- Relationship
- Status
- Education Level
- Age
- Location
- Language
- Interests
- Post end date
5. Post During Specific Hours
The best time to post on your Facebook page is during slow hours when your competitors aren’t sharing their content. Moreover, if you post new content on your Facebook page during peak hours, your post might get lost in the hurricane of other Facebook posts.
On the other hand, posting when your target audience is online is not the best approach in my opinion, because your post doesn’t immediately show up on your audiences news feed. It takes some time for Facebook to populate your target audience news feed with your post. Therefore, the ideal time to post on Facebook is when the social media platform is resting. However, that doesn’t mean you should post at 5 am.
6. Choose the Right Content-Type
The internet is slowly moving away from text and image-based content to short videos. Since videos are easy to understand, fun to watch, and capture their viewer’s attention, social media platforms promote video content more than images or text. A study conducted by Socialbakers showed that video content garnered the most user attention and has the highest organic reach on Facebook.
7. Right Balance of Promotional and Informational Content
To increase organic reach on social media, you need to think about what your followers want instead of what you want them to see. Social media followers are free to like or unlike your page, so it’s best to give them what they want. The best strategy for increasing organic traffic on Facebook is to follow the 80/20 rule.
80% of your Facebook posts should share valuable information with your followers. This information should be related to your product or service; however, you should refrain from using sales tactics. Instead, make informational or ‘What if’ posts to capture your follower’s attention. Once 80% of your followers see relevant information on your Facebook page, they will share your content which will convince the remaining 20% of your followers to buy what you are selling. Moreover, sharing informative posts on your Facebook page builds your authority and boosts your credibility.
8. Interact and Engage With Your Followers
Organic social media reach is never easy, but it’s more fruitful than paid ads. To increase the organic reach of your Facebook page, you need to engage with those who are engaging with your post. When a brand engages with its customers, it gives the follower a sense of achievement and builds trust. Moreover, engaging with your followers can increase your chances of going Viral because your replies are also counted as a comment and the more comments you have, the more attention you can garner on Facebook.
Lastly, interacting with your followers also shows that you care about them and boosts engagements. However, it would be best if you refrained from sounding like a bot because it might have adverse effects.
In a Nutshell
More and more businesses are inclined towards paid ads, leaving room for organic reach to flourish among businesses that can’t or don’t want to run paid ads. There is no better time than now to increase organic reach of your social media. The points mentioned above will help you go viral on Facebook and other social media platforms if you follow them wisely.
If you want to learn more about social media marketing and how to increase organic reach on Facebook, you can follow my blog posts.
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