It’s the dream of every marketer – to increase their organic Facebook presence.
Social media has changed the way companies market their products and services on the internet. A phenomenon that we’re still seeing. Facebook is one of the unique social media sites that have been leading the pack consistently for a long time.
There is no doubt that Facebook is the place for your business to have a strong presence in social media. Mainly because it’s where everyone is — including your target audience.
According to Social Media Examiner’s influential annual report, 62% of marketers have described Facebook as the most important strategy for their marketing strategies.
This isn’t supposed to come as a surprise, because if you look at the stats, Facebook has …
- About 2.41 billion daily monthly users
- 3 billion subscribers of the Messenger app
- About a billion active users on Instagram
Because Facebook has the largest user base, this makes it easier (and perhaps even cheaper in some cases) to meet the target market and create the right connections.
But, if you don’t use the right techniques, bringing directed traffic back to your page from Facebook can be quite difficult. No wonder “Internet Advertising” is still a jigsaw for so many companies.
One of the strongest reasons Facebook marketing doesn’t work out for many could be simply because they can’t stand out from the rest.
When you’re advertising on Facebook, you’re essentially dealing with a number of other similar businesses in your field that is reaching the same demographic as you.
Your contest, just like you, wants a piece of Facebook. Which is the largest part of the social media pie?
So unless and until you focus on being different from others in your approach, you will have a hard time connecting to your target audience.
But is it that way?
Nope, no. As competition grows, you also need to give your prospects a reason to leave Facebook to visit your site.
In other words, you need to impress them with an offer that is too difficult to resist. It’s something that makes them want to take action. And this is only possible if people are actually exposed to your offer.
This is where the natural influence of Facebook falls. Because in the end, it all boils down to what proportion of your target audience actually gets to see the redesign. And if you don’t use Facebook ads, it can be pretty difficult to boost your page.
However, if you can work to improve your reach and create a loyal Facebook audience, things can look different. And a lot more to your advantage.
Now, before we get into how you can do that, let’s take a look at…
How precisely is Organic Access on Facebook?
Facebook Organic range is simply the amount of people who are exposed to your posts without advertising or any paid promotion.
Sponsored content and marketing articles, on the other side, are beyond paying range. Meaning people who accessed the material on the basis of a paid promotion. Growing users actually get to see this content depends on the type of ad targeting choices that you choose.
But is it that easy to hit your target audience on Facebook? Or is there a bit more to it?
Many brands are now trying to rely on Facebook’s organic reach, creating a detailed marketing strategy to ensure that they succeed. But, to their dismay, they do not see the performance they want to see after posting content on their Facebook page. Even after making a real effort to create and share great content, there is not much traffic to report or engage.
When this occurs, marketers are pressured to reconsider their Facebook marketing strategy and simply conclude that their customer doesn’t really like their content.
The reality is far from it, though.
Most of the cases, this has nothing to do with their material and pacing. Yet more to do with the organic reach of Twitter. There are days when you could just add an article to your Facebook page and get most of your followers to see it.
Things are different now. Due to Facebook’s ever-evolving organic reach and improvements to its main news feed technology, even some of the most popular brands are having a hard time accessing their viewers.
In a recent survey, it was noticed that overwhelming 60 percent of advertisers claimed that Facebook has slowly but steadily become “pay to play.” In other terms, unless and until you purchase advertisements on the Facebook site, the posts will not be shown to most of your followers.
In a study conducted by SocialFlow, it was found that brands experienced a sharp 42 percent decline in their organic Facebook reach in the first two quarters of 2016.
And when they analyzed data from the third quarter of the same year, they noticed a 52 percent drop in brands, which is by any means enormous.
What’s more, as social@Ogilvy examined more than 100 + Facebook pages from different brands, they found that the average organic Facebook media exposure posted was only 6 percent.
And it was even more shocking to see that smaller sites (with more than 500,000 + likes) had a little more than 2% coverage. It clearly means that the social media giant needs bigger companies to spend in their advertising products instead of focusing on the organic reach of Facebook.
Especially now that Facebook has recently announced that they will update the way they filter organic impressions for their Facebook pages. According to their spokeswoman, “This is not a shift to delivery, but a change in the way they sort out repeat organic experiences which happen within a short timeframe.”
They also said in another interview that the modification was meant to: “Make it easier for businesses to make connections between paid and organic networks.”
This is what it will look like after the update: “If an ad is on the monitor and someone scrolls down, and then scrolls up to the same message, it counts for 1 experience. If an ad is on the display for someone 2 different times a day, it counts as 2 experiences.”
1: Share Engaging, Native Video Contents
There is little question about the steady decline in the organic reach of Facebook; any professional marketer recognizes that. Given this, more priority is given for native video content on Facebook.
Natural video content is on the rise on Facebook and is known to help create real interaction. That’s why many companies are trying to focus on it. When compared to other types of content (links and photos), video turns out to be a much safer bet.
When you look at the stats, a whopping 8 billion plus clips are being viewed on Facebook every single day. As BuzzSumo has noticed, lower viewing automatically increases the number of videos that are posted on the social network.
In a survey by Impulse Creative, it was noticed that Facebook video posts accounted for 90 percent more users than link-based posts and 40 percent more people than image posts.
Even Socialbakers found that they had a 135 percent increase in their organic Facebook reach by choosing video content from photos.
So if you want to increase engagement and make Facebook more organic, it’s time to add video to your social media content strategy.
But make sure you’re not just the heck of creating videos. Even if you share videos, you want quality content to produce meaningful long-term outcomes.
Here are a few tips to make your Facebook clips stand out from the crowd and draw more views / commitment.
- Build square videos instead of landscape videos that are proven to perform better.
- Take the attention of your audience in the first 3-5 seconds
- Attach clear captions to your images, as 85 percent of people view Facebook videos without audio.
- Create a video around one central point instead of multiple points.
- Consider the name as succinct and as clear as possible while holding it short.
- Attach a quick call to action that will help you get more response.
2: Leverage Facebook Live Capacity
Facebook Live streaming was released in April 2016. And since then, it has allowed most businesses to link with their fans at a much higher level than other types of content.
That’s wrong, Facebook Live will help you get a high level of engagement! Which could be equivalent to good organic Facebook coverage.
If you’re a company that wants to grow its presence on Facebook, you can’t ignore the power of Facebook Live. You’ve got to start experimenting with it.
Compared to regular video content, people spend 3X more time consuming videos on Facebook Live. That makes it one of the most powerful broadcasting devices we have on the web right now.
Because of the resilience of Facebook Live and its ability to get a high level of engagement, it’s getting more brownie points from Facebook. As a content type, you get more eyes because Facebook makes it a priority for your news feed.
When Wishpond experimented with Facebook Live, they saw a stunning 300 percent increase in their Facebook reach.
Once Socialbakers looked at the quality of their posts in the Facebook news feed, they found that their Facebook Live clip was performing better than any other post style.
They’ve seen their organic Facebook scope grow every time they transmit live. When you look at the chart below, you can see that they’ve got a real increase to their viewership from sharing only one live video.
Here are some of the basic steps you need to take to get your own Facebook Live stream launched:
Phase 1: Choose a subject for your live video that is not only important to your target audience, but also exciting enough.
Phase 2: Spread the word about your upcoming live clip by building a Facebook event including time and date sessions.
Phase 3: Install the Facebook Pages software to stream your live broadcast.
Step 4: Build a rough outline of your live video so that you’re specific about the kind of details you’re going to share.
Step 5: Arrange the right camera equipment and test it out well in advance.
Step 6: Make sure you choose a room with ample amount of lighting minus any glares/shadows.
Step 7: Open your Facebook page app and start recording by clicking on the “Live” button.
3: Study What’s Working for Your Competitors
Most of the time you’re so focused on analyzing the performance of your own content, you forget to look around and see what your competition does.
It’s good to monitor your own content. Yet looking at the strategies of your rivals offers you an advantage. Not only does it help you create better content that your audience is receptive to, but it also lets you update your marketing strategy.
The good thing is, Facebook is going to make the whole system a walk in the park. As long as you know who your immediate contest is. You can check out the Facebook “Top Posts from Pages You Watch” feature to learn more about the others in your niche.
The above report is an example of what data you will see when you add your competitors. You can easily add all your competitors by clicking the “Add Pages” button on the top of the page.
Once set, you will be able to closely monitor the top content of your chosen pages. It gives you a fair idea of how their content works in terms of engagement.
You can further analyze each post by clicking on the links provided in the report. And understand their content and context without any conjecture.
The aim was to include just certain sites that reach a different market to yours. The more important your target is to you, the more useful the knowledge you gain. What you may then extend to enhance your own product strategy.
Emphasis on evaluating three important aspects of web monitoring:
- What kind of posts are giving results?
- What content topics are chosen
- What was the tone/style of their content?
Remember, this doesn’t mean you’re doing what the others are doing. The aim should be to gain motivation, apply your own unique insights to the results, and do something much greater than your competition.
Use these insights as a starting point to connect to your target audience at a much higher level. Work on creating a smoother plan that is suited to your own business.
4: Say no to the ‘ Engagement Bait ‘ content type
When you post great, relevant content on Facebook that your audience likes, it’s easy to engage them. And that’s what gives rise to organic interactions that are important in Facebook’s hands.
All the feedback on your Facebook posts become part of natural interactions that can eventually help improve your organic Facebook presence. Why? Why? Because these normal conversations help you to add value and work with the notorious news feed algorithm.
The idea is to give way to normal discussions. Not only on any issue, but only on those subjects that will help you lift your brand. Topics that can help you bring real value to your fans.
The more organic these interactions are, the stronger they are. Because the’ commitment bait ‘ type of content will only backfire. Which means that you can not and should not ask your fans to comment on your posts, like your content, or to tag it.
Facebook’s algorithm operates against attention baiting posts because it falls under ‘ forced interaction ‘ that doesn’t bring value or meaning to the material.
Even if you somehow get your’ commitment bait’ content seen by your fans, you’re only going to end up making a bad impression on them. These days, people are too smart to fall for commitment bait. So you’re just going to waste your time and effort.
If you want to link to your target audience, you need to stop Facebook games and focus on creating real conversations. It also makes you humanize your brand and make the website more important.
While you should try to produce content that creates real discussions in a creative way, make sure you avoid content that is controversial in nature or something that can start a heated debate.
Yes, it’s definitely not easy to get people to talk to each other and interact with each other on your posts. Especially for those with a new Facebook page, trying to get more engagement might seem like an uphill battle.
But it can be achieved, because you are special in your method. And they’re taking the right move.
One downside of contacting your faithful Facebook fans is that they find your profile more valuable to their minds. And since Facebook lets people see more updates from their favorite sites (by selecting’ See First’ in the news feed option), you can potentially get more of your content ahead of time as time passes.
So long so you focus on getting more and more people talking on your profile, it will be harder for you to increase your organic Facebook presence.
5: Choose Quality Content Over Quantity
Due to increasing rivalry in the social media world, companies are always aiming to create and post more content than ever before. The emphasis is always on success, even if it comes at the cost of reliability.
In the early days, when Facebook wasn’t as popular as it is today, posting more content worked well because it helped you get more views. However, your Facebook marketing strategy may be suffering from this mentality today. Putting quantity above quality is not a smart move.
Facebook has become a behemoth, and is therefore highly competitive. That’s why Facebook’s organic reach has kept on declining overtime. The number of people you can reach today is dramatically lower.
This just goes on to show that Facebook room is not only getting crowded, but also more important for all those who want to get more access to their posts.
Although a large number of companies are seeking opportunities across Facebook for advertising, a majority of them are quitting the site due to a lack of good results. Nonetheless, not using Facebook is a risk, because it can work for you by taking the right actions.
You just need to think differently from your rivals about how you publish your material and when. You need to concentrate more on publishing quality content less often so that you can see more. This attitude is contrary to what everyone is trying to do, which is exactly why it works.
When popular social media management app Buffer saw a sharp decline in their organic Facebook reach, they decided to shift their Facebook posting strategy in a different direction to reach more people.
They began posting a vast amount of content between January and October 2016, which amounts to as many as 40 Facebook posts per week.
When you look at it from a superficial level, it makes sense what Buffer did. Since each post had a lower organic Facebook reach, posting more content would have helped them reach more people technically.
But over time, they’ve noticed that by increasing their daily number of posts, their organic Facebook reach has dropped. The more material they’ve published, the less impact they’ve had.
Buffer does not publish more than once a day on its Facebook page. They are diligent to share the best and most relevant content with their followers only when it is available.
The bottom line is, you can’t take a full-blown strategy today and win Facebook advertising. Instead, you need to change your focus on posting only high-quality content, even if it means posting less often.
Wrapping up
Facebook has most likely become a “pay-to-play” website. Yet, like a number of other online platforms, we want to give the best user experience. If your organic product is, it will be shown to more people.
Follow the tips we’ve given you to make sure you share some of your best content to date. So you can start building a faithful follower. If you’ve found a number of different tips along the way, feel free to share them in the comments below. We love reading the success stories of our blog subscribers!
Thank you so much for reading!
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