How to Increase Organic Reach on your Social Media Channels?

Are you posting daily on social media but no engagement? You go through tedious job of creating content but with no luck of engagement? People are visiting your website but not converting into sales or room nights? Does this sound familiar to you? Then you should read rest of the article with utmost attention. Because we are going to unearth some of the best practices in the industry to boost your organic reach on social media.

Organic reach on social media is not dead and they haven’t turned into ‘white walkers’ (GoT). Stop getting scared and do not blame the algorithm. Rather you should look into the quality of the content.  Having said that there are different tactics, you may want to follow while you totally condemned the new algorithm and lose against the battle of lesser organic reach.

The tactics that you should follow while creating quality content and make strong impact on users’ experiences about your product and services are as follows: -

Know the art of creating content: The one most important point that many businesses miss these days while strategizing for social media platforms, is not to make the whole social media experience about users. The content should speak to users. There should be subtle answers to all the queries that users may want replies to. And don’t make this about the business or about the hotel. Yes, you heard it right. Create some good quality content that addresses the pain areas of the users. They are looking for some good bar or great dining experience around. Perhaps they are looking for some good places around to celebrate birthdays or anniversaries. But simply putting ‘posts’ about the services that you provide might not grab their attention. Post, how we are going to make a difference to their dining experience or how are we going to make that evening worth remembering. Once we show them that we care and we truly want to make a difference in their life, users will stop scrolling down and click on your post. Put some emotions into your posts and see the wonders it will do. Especially, when there are thousand other establishments are making it tough for us to shine on social media feed.

Understand how it(algorithm) really works: We all know about the news feed algorithm, but we hardly have any understanding how it works. We all know that on Facebook and Instagram, organic reach is only 3% (last time I checked) i.e., posts without any paid/sponsored content will reach out to only 3% of the total fan club, you have on these social platforms. But what is the deal here? What are the deciding factors that make it happen? Let’s look into the 3 steps verification of social media posts that helps reach our users’ feed.

Recency: How recent the posts are?

Relevancy: How relevant the post for your users?

Engagement: Are they engaging enough for your users? 

If you agreed to out first point, then you are saved. When you put some emotions, excitements and passions into your content, they are naturally will become engaging and relevant for your users. Keep these in mind and create some great content and win their hearts.

User generated content: Perhaps the easiest way of creating relevant content for your users is to get it created by users themselves. Don’t be shocked! You must be amused by now to know that you could have saved on all the money and time you were pouring out to create good content, if you would have known earlier.  Easy, isn’t it? Yes, it is. But this needs a proper strategy and planning. Proper coordination with users and great freebies can be provided to users in exchange of creating great content. You may want to run some great contest or ask your fans and followers to write their on-site experiences on social media. More user generated content, the more trust and loyalty your business showcases on social media platforms. It has been researched that online/social media word-of-mouth publicity works best and trustworthiness, when it comes to buying any product or services. Go ask a favour to your followers, I am sure they will not disappoint you.

Unique content:  Each social media platform serves a unique purpose when it comes to engagement. Each has its own unique features – i.e., Instagram is a photo sharing tool and a lot of texts doesn’t work. Twitter, on the other hand, is a news feed or micro blogging site, so minimal text works here and no fancy images unlike Facebook or Instagram. So, while creating content keep these minute details in mind and do not posts same content across the social media platforms. Like ‘to each its own’, each social media platform serves different purpose and kindly be mindful about it.

Go Live: This feature by Facebook, Instagram and YouTube recently makes our digital marketers ‘a knight in the shining armour’. It equipped them with a very strong medium to communicate and engage with users on real time. Thus, it becomes more imperative that we create some great content. We can go live with our chef creating some delectable cuisines or our guests taking a sip of our new cocktails by our celebrity bartender at our rooftop bar. We can have so many creative ways to create content for Live videos. This feature can showcase your hotels in so many creative ways that no other medium can help.

Put some heartfelt (Insta)Stories: Stories are again very exciting and important tool these days. Stories give you the attention, the consideration that users should go to your feed and engage. Stories should be creative and very attention grabbing. As stories are very short in duration and you have a very limited time make a lasting impact on your users. Obviously, it makes the process a bit tougher, but trust me successful Insta Stories can do wonders for your business. Be mindful about the emotions you are portraying through your stories, this is essential to reach out organically.

Influencer Marketing: I am not very excited about influencer marketing as it is losing its charm of being authentic. It is all becoming plastic and emotionless. But what the heck, when in Rome, do as the Romans. So, in today’s competitive digital space, if this works then go for it. But if your influencer can pull the act successfully, of course you will see the light of the day. All you need some eye balls, and Influencers got a lot of them in their kitty. Recently, Instagram have cleared some fake and spam followers from these influencers profile. Perhaps that makes sense now.

Analytics: Now here comes my favourite part – the analytics. Be a sherlock Holmes and get all the nitty gritty in place. Get the analytics right and make sure that you are tracking each success matrices closely. This will give you a better picture – where you stand in terms of engagement and touching the heart of your followers/users. Get a good tool which can give you a great reading. Social media themselves have a robust system in place for analytics.

For now, you may want to apply these tactics and make your social media marketing experience a bit batter. In this highly competitive digital space, a lot is changing every day, so, we need to keep ourselves on our toes and keep a regular check what is happening and how we should adapt to it. Irrespective, good content is always going to stay. So, make sure that you make some heartfelt content and be the Starks or the Targaryen and win the battle of reaching out to your users, your own users ??.  

Happy Posting!

-Bedant Das