In early December, Facebook announced it was putting more “news” in the news feeds rather than displaying more posts from pages.
As a consequence, you may have noticed a reduction in the number of people who see your posts. In fact, some business claim that their organic reach dropped by as much as 40%.
With page post reach sitting at around 16% before the drop, it puts pressure on businesses to either find alternative sources of traffic, prepare to pay to promote posts or work out strategies how to get the most out of their newsfeed.
A good strategy to overcome this issue is to start working on how to engage your audience.
The first step is to look at your Facebook insights and understand what types of content they are more likely to engage with and when they are online.
Start promoting your best content to your existing fans via paid ads. Encourage them to share, like and comment.
Doing so, will give your page a kickstart and help boost its reach because of your amazing content. You can then stop advertising and start posting.
1. Post good quality, engaging content.
This is not just about posting images and memes. Remember Facebook’s changes were about encouraging links to news sources. Post a variety of different things – from images, links and videos and monitor what gets the best response.
For us, we noticed that posts with links seemed to get more traction than what they did previously but it used to be the other way.
Facebook is always changing things, so you need to stay on top of your insights and review them regularly.
2. Aim to entertain & educate rather than just sell
While bottom line is important, you must bear in mind that Facebook is a social network and people don’t go there to be sold to – they go to Facebook to be entertained.
Share interesting things first and then promote. Go for the 80 / 20 rule. Make 80% (or more) of your posts to be about engagement and 20% (or less) about promotion.
Your aim is to be the authority in your market so you are top of mind when your customer are ready to buy.
3. Post more frequently
The jury is out on this one. Some experts to say post once a day. Others say more frequently. Whilst this may come down to how many resources you have available, at least one post a day is better than none.
I like Jon Loomers take on this where he states “If you post 10 times in a day, how many people will you reach? You’ll reach some of the same people across a few of those. But overall, the unique number of people you’ll reach will skyrocket.”
4. Re-share old content
This doesn’t mean posting the same item 5 times a day like you see on Twitter.
It means re-sharing content that is evergreen that you may have shared some months ago. Remember, not everyone will have seen your post the first time and those that have may appreciate the reminder – especially if you are sharing your best stuff.
5. Bump your posts
Ever noticed that an old post that you saw ages ago appears back in your news feed once someone else makes a comment about the post – it’s called story bumping. The same thing can happen with page posts. So having content that encourages comments is great.
6. Have a content plan
It’s all too easy to get caught up in the day to day operations and forget about posting. Or worse still, going to your page to make a post only to struggle to come up with an idea to post.
Having a plan will free you.
Once a month, one of our social media strategists pulls together a content plan – not just for Facebook but for our Twitter and Linked In company page. It didn’t always be that way. What we used to do for our clients, we neglected to do for ourselves.
7. Use targeted advertising
Whilst it might be important for you to get a lot of page likes, it’s usually not that important that you get a lot of likes.
It’s more important to get fewer, better quality likes on your page. The better the quality of likes you get, the more likely you are to get better engagement. The better the engagement, the more likely your posts will appear in your fans’ news feed.
Imagine if you sell maternity clothing and decide to start advertising to friends of fans. Consider what this means – you will be targeting their mum, dad, husband, brother – none of whom is likely to be in your core target market.
It’s critical your advertising is as targeted as what it can be – and that’s what most advertisers get wrong.
Use Facebook’s custom audiences and lookalike audiences advertising feature.
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