How to Maximize Your Facebook Reach
Is declining reach impacting your Facebook marketing ROI? Looking to improve your Facebook exposure?
Facebook Organic Reach
Fact is that organic reach on Facebook is at an all-time low of 2-6%, and it continues to decline. This surprise you that having a large Facebook fan base doesn’t seem to be as beneficial as it once was. Large brand pages with more than 500,000 likes have the lowest organic reach (~2%).
More than 60 million businesses have a Facebook page, yet only 4 million are active advertisers. Facebook would love to entice the 56 million non-advertisers to give ads ago.
Many businesses are stuck in one frame of mind. They hope that if they post more often, organic reach will suddenly kick back in. The reality, that’s just not going to happen. The good news is you can significantly improve your organic reach with strategic paid efforts.
That’s why Organic reach has become harder to achieve on Facebook and marketers are turning to creative ways to get their messages seen. In the next four post, you’ll discover how to help your Facebook posts go further.
#1: Start With Content Optimized to Generate Attention and Shares
Highly shareable content is the KEY of social media marketing. Doing your best to optimize for shares is number-one content creation tip. As people scroll the Facebook news feed, content must make people pause and read. The promise of your content must be thumb-stopping. What you deliver must inspire people to respond with, “OMG, I must share this now!”
The Facebook news feed algorithms reward active advertisers and engaging content. The more reactions, comments, and shares your posts get, the better their reach for both organic and paid ads (your advertising dollars will go further).
Develop your post strategy. Remember to minimize your ask. Not every piece of content needs to have a call to action (CTA). Create a mix of content that combines promotional posts with posts that add value, educate, and entertain. When including a CTA, keep it simple.
Pro Tip: Consider using a ratio of five non-promotional posts to everyone promotional post.
#2: Build Organic Traction Before Promoting Posts With Ads
Get more from your paid reach. Let your posts run for 1-24 hours to gain some organic traction before boosting them. Increased organic reach is never guaranteed, but there are ways to give your Facebook posts a better chance of good reach.
Here are some tips to make your content more likely to attract the views that yield shares and reach.
Post More Native and Live Video
Video continues to hold sway on Facebook with triple the engagement and 1200% more shares than text and image posts combined. When compared to YouTube video shared on Facebook, native video uploaded to Facebook has 10 times the reach.
Facebook’s algorithm factors in the time spent on a video, and the shares it generates. Use video to gain more visibility and reach on the platform.
Although there’s no definitive answer to what Facebook means by “longer,” aim for 5-20 minutes for your videos.
Pro Tip: Use your video views to create a custom audience and retarget with future posts.
Create a Mix of Post Types
You can deliver content on Facebook in several different ways, including video, slides, photos, and text. Mix up your post types and you’re more likely to attract views from a variety of users.
Repost Popular Posts
Identify content that received a lot of attention the first time you posted it on Facebook. Repost it to capture the attention of people who didn’t see it the first time and give users who did a chance to revisit it and share it again.
Use Organic Audience Targeting
If you have specialized content that’s more likely to be of interest to a specific type of Facebook user, use Facebook’s Audience Optimization tool to choose a more friendly audience for that content.
To access this tool from your page post composer, click the targeting icon.
The Preferred Audience tab lets you select interest tags to show topics to people who’ve demonstrated an interest in them.
Use the Audience Restrictions tab to narrow the visibility of your post based on location, age, gender, and language.
After your post runs, refer to the Audience Insights feature to see how the post performed so you can adjust the preferred audience and restrictions for future posts.
Pro Tip: The Audience Optimization feature also works with Graph API, Instant Articles (add tags to your stories when adding to your RSS feed), and third-party publishing platforms like Sprinklr.
Tag Relevant Pages in Appropriate Posts
If the content of your Facebook post mentions or promotes another business, tag the business in the description/narrative of your post. Your post will then pop up on the other business’s page, which is likely to draw their attention and result in a share, increasing the potential audience for your post.
If you have a blue check mark verified page, be sure to make use of the Branded Content feature when promoting a third-party brand, product, or sponsor.
Pro Tip: If your page is blue check mark verified and you’re publishing branded content, consider working with promotional partners from time to time to help elevate the reach of one another’s content.
Drive Traffic from Off-platform Sources
If you embed Facebook posts on your blog or link to them via other channels, you’ll help send people who click on them to Facebook, improving your reach. (The unique URL for any public post on Facebook is the timestamp of the post.) In addition to showing your Facebook feed on your website using a plugin, you can embed individual posts and videos in your blog posts.
It’s also advisable to include a link for a specific Facebook post in an email or to link to your Facebook page by including the icon in your email footer, blog, or other website pages.
These methods give people who may not have seen your Facebook content another chance to click through.
Publish from a Verified Facebook Presence
If you have a large business, you can apply for a blue check mark verification for your Facebook page. Not only does this check mark lend authenticity to your page or profile, but you’ll also get a higher priority in search results, giving you more visibility for your posts.
While not the same, verifying your local business with a gray check mark badge has similar benefits.
#3: Prioritize Audience Engagement
Take every opportunity to engage your audience because that’s part of what keeps them coming back for more. The guidelines of good conversation for in-person contact apply to social media too. When people leave a comment, recognize that they’re starting a conversation and be sure to respond to any comments you receive. Let people know they’ve been heard.
Also, acknowledge people who share your posts. Hop on over to the shared post and hit one of the reaction buttons (like or love) to let people know you appreciate their share.
Remember, Facebook loves to reward posts with high engagement. There’s a news feed algorithm signal for “regency”; posts that garner engagement quickly are more likely to get wider organic reach. But with your more evergreen (rather than time-sensitive) content, audience engagement may continue for a longer period.
#4: Amplify Your Organic Reach With Paid Promotion
Here’s where you start to pay to boost the reach of your content to improve your Facebook marketing ROI considerably. Rather than promote everything, apply some strategic selection to amplify the established organic reach of specific posts with Facebook ads.
For some posts, your objective may be to raise awareness and increase engagement and video views, for example. Other posts, you’ll want to promote those with a link so you can drive traffic to your website. (Of course, remember to have the Facebook pixel installed and test retargeted promoted content.)
After you select your posts, decide how you want to allocate your budget. For the best results, spread out your ad spend and avoid blowing your entire budget on a single post with one or two boosts.
Example: You have a $300 budget to amplify a specific post. Take the first $100 and create an ad set to promote the post. If your post includes a link to your website, choose the Traffic objective. If it’s a video, you might choose Video Views as your objective.
Facebook’s ad algorithms will start amplifying your organic content and paid content. Run your ad for two to three days, pause it for a day or two. Next, take another $100 and create a different ad set and repeat the process for the same post. Finally, repeat this process again with the last $100.
Pro Tip: The Mari Method has proven you can extend organic reach over many weeks and months. With a quality, evergreen post and using the wave theory of applying budget, pausing, and then applying more budget, you’ll find the life of your post extended significantly.
Example is a signature blog post by fitness expert Bree Argetsinger (a.k.a. The Betty Rocker) she shared on Facebook. Periodically, she’ll add budget to promote this Facebook post to drive new traffic to her evergreen blog post, allowing for fresh custom audiences and retargeting.
The Betty Rocker blog post was written in 2015, it continues to deliver measurable results with a whopping 29,400+ shares and counting!
In conclusion, the steps outlined will help you significantly increase the organic reach of posts with paid Facebook promotion.
For the best results for your business, work with the algorithm as it exists right now. Stay up to date and adjust as the algorithm shifts.