9 Ways To Improve Your Organic Reach on Social Media

Among all social media channels, we know Facebook stands tall no matter whatsoever. Facebook is the no1 social media platform also in terms of declining organic reach.

Every other platform like twitter & LinkedIn as well, the organic reach is gone down. Today we’re going to look at why and what you can do to change it in your favor?

For small businesses, it’s not always affordable to pay for marketing on social media. For others, it’s about balancing the paid reach with organic. 

Today, I’ll help you, maximize your potential on social media. Before we proceed, let's find out why organic social media reach is declined so badly at every social platform.

Why organic social media reach is declining

The OPEN SECRET about Facebook is, its pushing businesses to use its paid advertisement, this change is more in line with Mark Zuckerberg’s vision for the platform. In short, he wants to “engage users on the platform.”

Facebook (and every other social media platform) wants to show users only the content that is most engaging, and drop everything else. Known as the News Feed Algorithm, it brings to mind another particular algorithm. Yep, you guessed it: Social media algorithms mirror Google’s.

Social media is adopting its own form of SEO in a way that promotes a positive user experience. The way this algorithm works is by putting your posts in a pool as small as one percent of your followers. If those people engage with the content, then it gets introduced into a larger pool. Slowly but surely, more and more people see it, but only if it’s engaging.

This is huge information, but it doesn’t help you because you don’t know what Facebook and social media consider engaging.

Today’s ten tips are going to cover several platforms and help you define what it means to create shareable content people will engage with, and ultimately help you spread on your platforms of choice.

9 ways to increase your organic reach on social media

1. Choose to Focus Your Efforts on the Right platforms

Most businesses will assume that they need to have a presence on everything from Facebook to Pinterest, but that’s not necessarily the case.

Your audience may not have a presence on every social media platform, Choosing which network to focus on is easier than you think.

The best way to get accurate info about your audience is to simply ask them. Try using a survey

If you have a blog, then you should be using share buttons already. Many of these tools will provide analytics that shows who’s sharing your content and more importantly, where they’re sharing it. Follow these numbers to figure out which platforms to focus on.

Lastly, take a look at your competitors. Where are others in your industry posting? If you don’t see them anywhere on the platform, odds are you shouldn’t be there either.

2. Post an Effective Mixture of Content-Type

Videos are the type of content, which has the highest organic reach on Facebook.

Not only should you vary up the mix of images, status updates, links, and videos that you post, but also use tools like Facebook Insights to track your posts and see which types are performing best.

3. Post evergreen/educational/solution-based content

Consider solving common and persistent problems in your industry. Even better, try to post something educational and funny. Humor, shock, or awe are great emotions to target with evergreen content.

4. Choose Quality Over Quantity

Facebook themselves have said that the average user is subjected to over 1,500 stories per day. To increase engagement, the news feed only displays about 300 of these – those that are most relevant to the user.

With this knowledge in hand, we now know that posting more isn’t the answer.

Instead, we need to focus on posting high-quality, relevant content. In this case, it’s literally quality over quantity. Posting less with higher quality will increase organic reach more than spamming your page with everything you can get your hands on.

While there’s no exact science to this, the Buffer blog suggests you should post twice per day. Always remember that your business is unique, so don’t be afraid to experiment with different frequencies.

5. Post just before peak hours

Another misconception is that you should post when everyone is online, but that’s just going to throw your content into the hurricane of posts that people are seeing. If you wait until non-peak hours to post, you’re less likely to get drowned in all the noise.

Looking at research data, these are generally the best times you should be posting:

Facebook – (Thursdays & Fridays) between 1 pm and 3 pm

Twitter – (weekdays) between 12 pm and 6 pm

LinkedIn – (Tuesday & Thursday) between 7 am/8 am and 5 pm/6 pm

Of course, you should look into data for your own audience.

The idea is to post just 2/3 hrs before the pick hours so that the post can get some engagement & momentum early to stand out during pick hours.

6. Promote your profiles

Every place that your business has a presence should also showcase your social media platforms. On your website, your storefront, your business cards, the signature on your emails, anywhere you can think of.

Don’t forget, you can also cross-promote your social media profiles. Turn your Facebook likes into Twitter followers and vice-versa. You want your presence to be known everywhere which will ultimately grow your organic reach immensely.

7. Post the right balance of promotional/useful content

Sharing valuable content (how-to guides, articles, new posts, etc.) grows a user’s trust in your brand. They come to know you as an authority in the industry and will, therefore, trust you when you recommend a product or service.

The rule to master here is the 80/20 balance. Eighty percent of your content should be useful and helpful, while 20% can promote your brand or its products. That eighty percent will bring new followers and build trust, they’ll then see the twenty percent and buy into what you’re selling.

 8. Interact with and engage your followers

If you properly engage with people and reply to their comments, you’re going to build a great reputation that will spread. People will look for your posts because they’ll be genuinely interested in what you’re doing.

9. Capture attention

The average human attention span is 8 seconds. That’s less than a goldfish.

Therefore, you need to create exciting content with instant appeal. For instance, Facebook updates with 40 characters or less get 86% more engagement, so avoid the temptation to waffle.

End of thought

The secret to organic social media reach is the same as the secret to ranking well on search engines. It’s all about optimization, user experience, and high-quality content. If you start thinking about your social media efforts in the same way you think about your SEO work, you’ll see the pieces fall into place.

AJIT padhy

Digital Marketer by Passion & Founder of Kulgadgets