October 17, 2013
It is reported that on average only 16% of Facebook page posts reach fans – a somewhat disheartening statistic when community managers spend a great deal of time and creativity nurturing and managing their business’ Facebook page. It’s frustrating when they take stock and realise that such small proportion of their business’ (often hard-earned) audience is actually viewing their carefully crafted content…
Although brands are faced with a real challenge when it comes to boosting their Facebook page reach, there are techniques and methods that can help. Community managers must have a good understanding of Facebook’s Edgerank algorithm, to understand how to better their activity in line with what matters most according to Facebook’s criteria.
Listed below are some techniques you can adopt in a bid to bolster your Facebook reach:
– Use clear calls to action in posts. In order to improve your organic reach you need to work on improving ‘affinity’; one of the elements of Facebook’s algorithm which relates to how much of a relationship a given fan has with your brand and your Facebook content. Affinity is improved by repeat interaction, so encouraging your fans to comment, like and share your content will build and influence affinity, thus improving your page Edgerank and reach.
– Using images in your Facebook content is a must (if you aren’t already doing so!) It’s been proven that images receive 53% more engagement than text only posts. They also carry more ‘weight’ in terms of Edgerank, so it’s a no brainer really…
– Take the time to understand your audience. Delve into your Facebook insights tool to better understand how your current audience uses Facebook. If the weekend is when your audience is most active on the platform, but you’re only putting out posts Monday to Friday, you will be reducing your opportunity for engagement and falling prey to the ‘time decay’ element of Edgerank.
– Engagement should go both ways. Remember it’s a conversation; you can’t just put out content and job done. You need to frequently spend the time on your page to view the engagement that your posts are receiving. It goes without saying that where there are opportunities presented, you should continue the conversation, particularly where your fans have left positive comments on your content.
– Experiment with Timeline competitions. You might have heard that Facebook relaxed their rules around competitions a couple of months ago, meaning that brands are now able to able to run incentives via their Timeline (previously all promotions had to be run through a 3rd party app). You can ask users to enter your competition by liking or commenting on page posts – a dream for incentivising engagement on your page (affinity benefits)!
– Experiment with paid media. Lastly, a guaranteed method to boost your Facebook reach is through paid media promotion. Through the ‘boost post’ functionality, you can guarantee extra eyeballs on your content, but pick which posts you bolster wisely.
Remember: Your organic reach WILL fluctuate over time. Community management needs to be a constant progress of monitoring and optimisation, to ensure maximum reach. Good luck!
© Kevin Krejci ”I offered Facebook $101B, but they turned me down… ” Photo. Attribution 2.0 Generic