The death of organic reach and engagement on Facebook has been - in my opinion - prematurely declared.
It is true that it is harder than in the past to get strong organic reach and engagement. Facebook really does want to become a "pay to play" platform. After all, they have shareholders to keep happy.
But that doesn't mean you need to write off organic reach altogether.
Here are some stats from a post I made on one of my pages about 24hrs ago. These are organic performance stats.
This particular page has reached as high as 11 million people in one week, without spending on post boosts.
So how can you improve your organic page performance?
Here are my biggest tips:
1) Keep a low ratio of promotional posts to non-promotional posts. I try to post only 1 promotional/advertising post for every 9 non-promotional posts I make (this is a rough ratio)
2) Use content types that boost engagement - video and photos. Text-only posts tend to have the lowest possible engagement.
3) When posting videos and photos ensure you do also add a text description. Even if it's just a sentence or two.
4) Minimize the use of text on images, trying to keep it below 20%.
5) Study what types of content work well with your audience and do more of that. Don't reinvent the wheel! On all of my pages I keep accurate records of what themes/topics resonate, and try to post that type of content.
6) Minimize the use of links to external pages. Far too often I will come in and do work for a client who is struggling with Facebook reach, only to discover that all of their posts are links (even worse, all of them are links to products). Facebook hates you linking to other sites.
Ultimately, Facebook wants to keep people on Facebook. Why? So they can sell more ads. The second you get someone to leave Facebook, they stop being an ad opportunity (unless you're linking them to an Instant Articles-enabled site, but that's a whole different kettle of fish).
7) When you do want to link, try posting an image first and then pasting the link in the post description ... as opposed to doing a regular link post. This often seems to deliver much better reach and link clicks.
8) Interact in the comments of your posts. This can help kickstart activity and improve reach.
Any questions please comment below or send me a message. I'm here to help.
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