Low Social Reach Is No Accident. Here's How to Fix It.
According to Facebook, the average user will have roughly 1500 posts in their News Feed every day. That’s a lot of posts at first thought – but as of 2016 there are over 50 million Facebook Pages, so the competition is fierce. While there are a huge number of factors that determine if a post is shown to someone, some of the main factors are:
- How well the post has performed with people who have seen it already
- How well previous posts have performed from the Facebook Page posting it
- How recent the post is
As you can see, trying to increase the engagement rates (likes, comments, shares, clicks) on your posts will help them to be shown in more people’s feeds, thus increasing the attention to your posts and business.
Page Insights Are More Useful Than You Think
It's important that the content published on your pages is relevant to the audience that you have, otherwise you’ll be beaten by other pages competing to get shown in the News Feed. The best place to start is by seeing the demographics of your Facebook Page by visiting the page, clicking the “Insights” tab, then selecting the “People” tab. This shows information about your fans, particularly the following:
- Gender
- Age
- Location (Country)
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Tailoring your content to match the fans of your page is important. From the above example Facebook page with 42% women aged 18-24, you can imagine how ineffective it would be to post content that was geared for men in their thirties! Understanding who your audience is allows you to post content relevant to them.
Use these insights to your advantage. If a large portion of your fans are located in the United States it would definitely be wise to post during peak hours for that country, which is generally in the evening towards the end of the week. This can differ from page to page, and country to country. The best way to find out is by regularly posting good content and then seeing which times get more interaction and engagement from your fans. It can be helpful to schedule Facebook posts so that they can be published even when you are not on Facebook.
Pay attention to age as well. 21-year-olds likely don't care for posts about retirement homes, but may enjoy reading articles about the latest celebrity news. They say age is just a number, but would you promote a senior's discount to your Facebook page if 95% of the fans were under the age limit for the discount? Play to your strengths, and expand your strongest user base first, rather than trying to make other age groups (and other user demographics) catch up.
Why Quality Content Actually Makes A Difference
Some pages on Facebook attempt to circumvent algorithms by posting enormous amounts of content daily, basically to try and force their way into the News Feed. Facebook is too smart for this – quality over quantity really stands its ground. As mentioned above with the weighting factors that determine how many news feeds your posts are shown in, it’s important that users actually engage with your posts, rather than scrolling past. It would be better to post only once per day if the quality of the post was good, rather than posting sub-par quality content 10 times.
Quality content isn’t some magical faraway land. It’s simply highly engaging content that is relevant to the fans of the page. For example, sharing a good ‘Secret Make Up Tips’ video on a page about Make Up is likely to perform well, whilst sharing a video about gardening on that same page may not be relevant enough to the audience to gain many likes, comments, shares or clicks.
This post engagement is what you want, because it’s a form of social proof that not only delivers the post to more news feeds, but when other users see a post with a large number of likes, comments and/or shares, they are more likely to stop scrolling and take notice of the post.
Quality content is also about having something of value to users, whether that be in the form of entertainment, information, conversation, or offers. A portion of your content should be humorous, entertaining or otherwise highly shareable content related to the topic of your page and business. Businesses and page owners can publish this in between promotional posts to help boost their reach. It also gives a nice break between promotional posts as people may unlike a page if it only posts promotions and advertisements all the time. A gardening business may post a video about ‘Funny Things Gardeners Say’, or a pet business may post a set of images detailing their updates about a new animal rescue shelter.
You aren't restricted to only images and videos. Businesses and page owners will often link to informative articles, such as the one you're reading right now. In fact, posting all different types of content (images, videos, links) is actually beneficial to your Facebook page. Think of it as a reach boosting synergy. Why? Facebooks News Feed algorithm knows which types of posts each user likes. If you've covered your bases by posting various types, you'll reach more users who are likely to interact with your posts both in the short and long term.
Don't Let Your Content Go To Waste
As you've learned, a core way to increase your social reach and growth is by getting your users active and building a community who regularly interact with your posts and your business. It helps to have a system in place to ensure that you post content at the right time so that your hard work crafting engaging content does not go to waste. Postblazer is a multi-talented Facebook and Twitter scheduler that lets you focus on the things that matter - your business. Scheduling posts on Facebook is a great method to increase your social reach and stay on top of things. However, using the default Facebook scheduler can be time-consuming, so it's better to use a tool dedicated to making your life easier.
Postblazer is available for free, and has premium plans for people who really want to maximise their social reach and therefore traffic to their business or cause.