We know the story all too well. Too often, brands and/or businesses spend days and weeks creating a Facebook ad for it to receive very little reach and engagement.  After all that work, you may feel as if all your time and effort were wasted! You may be thinking that your brand may not be good enough for engagement. You may have even vowed to never market on Facebook again in an effort to preserve your time, money, and effort. We get it! But don’t get yourself caught up in thinking that your brand isn’t good enough to be noticed. That’s not it at all. Facebook organic reach has proven to be difficult for some of the biggest brands. Despite how tough it can be, there are ways that you can grow your organic reach. 

First, let’s get something straight.  

What’s the difference between Reach, Engagement, and Impressions? 

It’s important to know the difference between reach, impressions, and engagement. Your Facebook reach is the number of users who see your post or page, regardless of whether or not they engaged with the content. For example, if you post a picture or an article on Facebook and it says that your reach is 50 people, then that means 50 people saw your post. Well, technically it tracks how many different screens that your post is displayed on. Organic reach is the number of people who have seen your content without paid distribution.

Impressions measure how many times your content was displayed to a person. Impressions do not include a specific amount of viewers. If a person views the same post five times then that person has contributed five impressions toward that post. Technically, your post could have one reach and five impressions. Remember, Facebook reach is the number of users viewing your content within a specific period while facebook impressions are the total number of views on your post. Engagement is just how it sounds. It’s how many people engage with your post, whether that be through likes, comments, or shares. 

Facebook organic reach can be extremely hard for businesses who want to boost their page without ads. What you’ll learn is that you need paid ads along with organic content to actually see an impact on your following. One of the first things you need to do is build trust with your audience. You can build trust with your audience by consistently putting out content that provokes thoughtful experiences and responses.

This might sound incredibly easy, but it is a process that takes time and effort. Over time, your audience will begin to trust you and you’ll see an increase in followers and likes as a result. As you begin to make changes to your Facebook marketing strategy, you’ll also notice a positive change in your organic reach. Below are five ways that you can improve your Facebook organic reach.

1. Make Facebook a Community for your Business

If you are having a hard time building an audience, consider why people follow your brand. Is your entire follower list composed of only friends and family members? Well, truthfully, a good audience is not about how many likes you have, but it’s about the quality of the likes. It’s great that Aunt Patricia liked your brand page, but you will never make any reoccurring sales if your customer base is filled with only people who know you and probably only liked your page because they were trying to show support. 

Consider giving your customers a reason to like your page. Offer your fans something unique that they can’t get anywhere else, whether that would be creating a Q&A session, weekly videos, articles, giveaways, tips, or freebies. Give your visitors a reason to click that “Like” button and follow you on your journey. This means that you need to constantly be making updates, creating content, and engaging visitors with your brand. 

Bring more users into your community. It’s a great way to increase reach and engagement. It also helps build a brand that people will notice. The more people that interact with your brand, the more likely that your posts will show up on their feeds. 

2. Add your Facebook link to your other Business Pages

Building an audience can be the trickiest part of increasing your Facebook organic reach. A simple way to increase organic reach would be to constantly remind your visitors to “Like” or follow your page. You could do this by including a Facebook link to other business profiles, such as your website and other social media pages. If you’re not already doing this, you need to right away! This is such an easy way to send more visitors to your Facebook page and get more eyes on your content. You should always make it very easy for your visitors to find you on other platforms. You’d be surprised how impactful a few links can be. 

3. Know the Best Times to Post on Facebook 

In order to be effective, you need to find the perfect balance between spammy and unattentive content. There are so many reasons why people, especially of varying generations, will unfollow a brand. Sometimes, this has everything to do with when (at what time) a business/brand will post on social media. People will unfollow accounts on social media for reasons such as they are annoying, spammy, offensive, they had a bad experience, or the brand is just unresponsive (depending on the time that they post). 

Over-posting, just as under-posting, can pose some real damage to your following. You could potentially see less traffic, likes, and follows if you are posting more than once a day. Learning when to post during the day is very important. You can find this information (catered specifically to your brand) on Google Analytics when you sign up for an account. Though generally, the best times to post on Facebook are between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. Monday through Friday. Only between those times will you see more people on Facebook, which gives you an opportunity to increase your traffic and organic reach.  

4. Be Consistent with your Content 

Once you know how much to post and when, focus on making consistent content. Being consistent is so important! It means that you need to be consistent on when you post and how much you create per week. It might not seem overly important, but posting consistently will allow your customers to gain trust in you and your brand. After a while, they’ll also begin to expect more content. You might also notice your audience growing, as a result of the amount of content you’re creating. Your audience will start to rely on you for new content, tips, advice, videos, and articles. If you’re anything, be consistent. 

5. Use Many Different Channels

Facebook has become one of the most popular paid social advertising channels out there. You cannot solely rely on organic Facebook methods to get you the audience that you want. If you do this, you’ll be missing out on opportunities to grow your audience. At some point, you will have to invest in paid Facebook marketing. That’s not to say that organic content won’t help your case. 

This strategy is a double-edged sword. If you rely too much on organic content, then you will be limiting yourself to expanding your audience. If you never post organic content, then your Facebook page will look super dry and boring. You want a good mix of organic content and paid social advertising. Use your organic content to see what your audience likes the best. Once you know this information, you can use that content on your paid ads. It might also be worth it to split test your content to see which performs better. 

Use your organic content to increase your visitors, split test your content, and use the best content in your paid ads!  Increasing your organic reach may seem like a difficult task, but if you follow these steps, you’ll be on your way to a larger following and greater success.