After Facebook started changing things around for business pages, it made organic reach on Facebook pretty close to dead. The whole point of having a social media presence is to interact with customers and followers. Without people seeing your posts, this can be pretty difficult to do. If you’re tired of seeing posts that only end up in front of anywhere from one to twenty followers at most, there are a few things that you can do to recover a little bit of your reach which translates into increased engagement.
Engagement is any interaction that your followers are having with you and the posts on your page. Likes, shares, comments, reviews, and more are all examples of engagement. Improving engagement improves your reach because Facebook wants to show people relevant content to them. If someone likes your post, their friends will see that. The more people are interacting on your posts, the more their connections will then see those posts.
So, how can you raise your Facebook engagement rates?
Preferred Audience Targeting: One method is a free Facebook feature called preferred audience targeting. It allows you to target your posts as if they were ads. You have the targeting capabilities of advertising, without the cost. This way you can choose the demographics of your posts in an attempt to put them in front of people who are more likely to be interested in them and interact with them.
Previous Organic Reach: When people do interact with your posts, you can invite them to like your page. Everyone who interacts may not already be someone who likes the page. Remember that when a follower interacts with your post, suddenly their network can see that post too. So a new like on a post may be someone who isn’t currently following your page. There is a link that shows you the names of people who have recently reacted and interacted with your posts. Make it a part of your process to go through once a week, or more often if necessary, and invite those people to like your page. On the list of people who have interacted, they have three options to the right of their names. These options are “invite”, “liked”, or “invited”. If they haven’t already been, click “invite” to send them an invitation to like your page.
Quality Over Quantity: This doesn’t mean to stop posting regularly on Facebook. You should still be posting daily to your followers to keep them interested and aware that your page is current ad relevant. But focus on the posts that you are putting out. If you’re posting ten times a day, take a step back. Start posting a little bit fewer, but more quality updates to Facebook. You can test out your content and track which types of posts are getting the best results. Remember to tie back into and be relevant to your brand.
Advertising: This seems completely wrong. You can argue that if you’re paying for an ad, it’s not organic reach at all. That would be correct. However, if all else fails. A small $20 post that will bring you hundreds of impressions can lead to the start of organic reach for your brand. What do I mean by that? If you target your ad correctly, and your post is relevant to the content that you normally post for your business, then the people who do interact with that post on a paid level are the people that are interested in what you are sharing. You’ll then go through and invite those people to like your page. In turn, posts that you create in the future (for free) will get more impressions by these followers. In short, increasing your organic reach.
What issues and work arounds have you been having and creating with your Facebook business page? What has been the biggest challenge or frustration? What steps have you taken to fix it? Comment below!
