8 Algorithm Friendly Ways To Increase Organic Facebook Reach

Businesses have started feeling the heat since Facebook’s 2018 algorithm change, promoting “meaningful engagement” between friends and family. Does this mean organic reach on Facebook is almost over? Not entirely.

While most businesses see this step from Facebook as a hard blow, they are missing out on the new opportunity presented here.

It is true that Facebook marketing for businesses has become harder than before. But, if you succeed, you will be a shark in the ocean who doesn’t have to worry about competition from small fishes.

All Facebook wants is to promote meaningful interaction between people. If you successfully do this as a brand, you’ll reap fantastic rewards.

Instead of looking for short-term strategies to beat the new algorithm changes, it’s time to look at the essence of what Facebook wants businesses to do and re-purpose your marketing strategy accordingly.

So, if Facebook organizes content around the user’s family and friends, what can you do to announce your presence in the newsfeed without having to spend a fortune on advertising?

While the earlier goal was to get more fans to your page, the dynamics have changed. Engagement is the name of the game now. Having a low but highly targeted and engaged fan following is much better than a huge mix of of fans, some of whom wonder why they are even following your page.

With the basic mantra of promoting engagement, let’s look at the strategies you can adopt to increase your organic reach on Facebook.

8 Tips to Increase Organic Reach on Facebook

1. Incorporating Video Content Is An Absolute Must

With consumer attention moving towards video content, it is a no brainer to use videos in your Facebook marketing strategy. Ever since autoplay feature was enabled on Facebook news feed, using short and informative videos has been the go-to strategy to grab user attention.

According to CISCO, globally, IP video traffic will be 82 percent of all consumer Internet traffic by 2021, up from 73 percent in 2016.

The most popular type of videos on Facebook are “How to” videos that are approximately 40s long. While long form content is susceptible to skimming, visual content like videos and images are easy to grasp and are more likely to be consumed.

Over 85% of Facebook users watch videos with the sound off  (default setting). To grab user attention, it’s important that you add captions and place your point to be impressed within the first few seconds of the video.

To give you another important statistic by sprout social, people are five times more likely to watch videos on a smartphone than on a desktop. Therefore, it’s also important to ensure that your videos are optimized for mobile viewing.

With the emphasis on video, you might be worried about your marketing budget skyrocketing. It doesn’t have to be so.

If you are not doing video content already, this simple and informative video format used by 99signals is all you need to get started.

The discussion about Facebook and videos does not end without mentioning the most popular and important mode of video content- LIVE STREAMING!

Live videos are likely to attract six times more engagement than traditional videos, which in today’s marketing world is equivalent to hitting a gold mine! Along with promoting discussions, live videos help people connect with you and your brand on a personal level.

Doing product launches, Q&A sessions, behind the scenes videos or even a random “let’s connect” live stream will keep your fans drooling over you.

Once you are constantly putting out video content, keep assessing and improving them with the help of Facebook Insights.

2. Use The Power of A Real Person To Promote Your Brand

If Facebook promotes content from family and friends, using real people to promote your content can pay huge dividends. And, the simplest way to start is to get your employees to do that for you.

When your employees share your content, it will be visible to their friends and families, which increases your reach. To make this even better,  it is more likely that people will actually read your content since it is a coming from a person they know.

If you were worried about not being able to reach all of your followers because of declining organic Facebook reach, this method should give you some relief.

The following graphic from sprout social clarifies the importance of having advocates promote your brand.

3.  Create Content That Works

If your content is reaching a lot of people on Facebook but not receiving engagement, Facebook will mark them as low quality. This will hamper your chances of appearing on users’ news feed.

The definition of “content that works” will depend on the type of niche you are in and what’s working in it. The key is to identify the kind of content people want and give it to them.

For example, if you are in the ‘energy drink’ market, it is more likely that your fans will prefer adrenaline boosting visuals and posts. The key is to create content that is unique and tailored to meet your buyer personas’ needs.

In line with the evolving content consumption habits of internet users, HubSpot research found that internet users’ behaviors are changing to reflect a growing interest in visual content. And when it comes to reading, they are choosing social media outlets over traditional blogs and long form outlets.   

It’s a good idea to conduct a poll on your Facebook fan page where people can vote for the type of content they choose to consume. This will give you the information you are craving for without breaking your head over it.

Another strategy is to follow other popular brands in your niche. Before you follow them, it’s important to be selective and follow only those brands that have a good following, with quality content that receive high level of engagement. Seek inspiration from these pages and use the ideas to create your own style of content.

4. Choose the Best Time to Post Your Content

The first step is to keep posting content and use Facebook insights to determine its reach. Facebook Insights indicates the times when most people are online and also when the overall posting is low.

It’s an ongoing debate whether you should post when most people are online to increase your reach or you should post when the overall posting rate is low so that you’ve better chances of appearing on the news feed and getting seen.

Try both the methods and see what works best for you. Identifying the best posting times is often arrived through rinsing and repeating the process.

Make sure you don’t over post as it may piss off some fans. Keep the most important content for weekends as it is more likely to be seen during those times.  The following infographic from 99signals should give you a starting point in timing your posts.

5. Organic Targeting

The last thing you want on Facebook is your fans hiding your posts, which is detrimental for the health of your page. Your content might be high quality, but it just may not resonate with some people.

If your business page doesn’t have a highly targeted following, Facebook’s “News Feed targeting” feature serves well in the new algorithm scenario. Depending on the type of audience your content is designed for, you can target fans based on metrics like their interests, age, location, gender, preferred languages, relationship status and education level.

To elaborate further, a specific post targeted to an age group of 18 to 25 will not be visible to audiences belonging to other age groups and thus prevents the chances of youth friendly content getting hidden by older people.

6.  Avoid Making Plain Requests

Asking people to tag their 10 best buddies and to hit “yes’’ if they would want to be successful, is no longer a good strategy. According to Facebook, such posts do not encourage “meaningful engagement” and thus, will be demoted.

This doesn’t mean there is no scope to start a discussion on your page. You can still do it by sounding natural. The following post by Decathlon India is a brilliant illustration of crafting content that encourages people to start engaging naturally.

Here’s one more example from JBL.

7. Focus on Building a Community

This can be done by growing and nurturing your Facebook group. While a fan page is good to keep your audience posted on the recent events, more often, it’s a one way street. There’s a good chance that people see your content but don’t engage with it.

The advantage of having a Facebook group is that people get to see the person behind the brand. This makes them susceptible to interaction and engagement flows more naturally. Remember, people want to interact with a real person and not a brand.

Your group can be a closed one or public depending on how you want it. You may have a group for people who’ve purchased your product, a group for a particular sub-niche or a single group overall for your business.

Share upcoming events or launches with your group members, ask for feedback, indulge in Q & A’s and add value by answering the members’ most pressing queries. When you come out as a person who is open and adds value, people will start flocking to you for advice and suggestions! For example, If you are in the fitness niche, YOU will be the go to person for your group members when they think of fitness.

Apart from LIVE videos, building a Facebook group should be your go-to strategy for harboring meaningful interaction, just the way Facebook wants it to be.

8. Fewer Links, More Visuals

There are two reasons behind this. First, Facebook doesn’t encourage marketers leading their audience outside of Facebook. If you are just posting links, Facebook will demote such posts.

Second, links by themselves don’t attract attention. Since attention is what we are after, make sure each and every link is accompanied by an eye grabbing visual. It can be a picture, infographic, .GIF or a short video that sticks to the context.

This post by 99signals showing audio-visual highlights with a link leading to the Marketing Mantra podcast, is a perfect example of what we’ve just discussed.

Also, don’t forget to add a crisp, yet meaningful description that goes along with your post. Though visual content is what people look for, a good description has its own significance.

Final Thoughts

With evolving dynamics, marketers are always looking for new ways to enhance their organic reach on Facebook. The practices discussed above are both algorithm and business friendly and will help you in reaching out to more of your followers organically.

Editor’s Note: This article was first published on 5 November 2018 and has been updated regularly since then for relevance and comprehensiveness.

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