How To Combat Organic Reach Decrease
Facebook’s News Feed Space is an incredibly competitive territory. If ads are competing for a spot, you can only imagine how difficult it is for a brand’s organic content to make it in front of eyeballs on the News Feed. This blog will explain what is happening on Facebook and how to combat it as a marketer.
Competition
Facebook has over 70 million business accounts, with 5 million having heavily active ad accounts.
To have a spot in the News Feed means that your content needs to be better (and more liked by your audience on a regular basis) than your organic social competitors AND content that has money behind it.
Moreover, Facebook’s algorithm is set to only show content that users’ will want to see (based off of your account’s past performance, engagement rate, etc.). Since 2018, Facebook has also shifted back to focusing more on Facebook as a community of personal accounts than of business accounts. Organic reach for business accounts has decreased because of the high volume of competition, increase of Facebook ads, algorithm, a shifted focus back on personal accounts, and the ever present fact that only so much content can be consumed by an individual in a day.
How to Compete
First of all, ask yourself if your business has product market fit and, ideally, a “blue ocean.” This will be the first step toward success on social media because if your product/brand is ordinary, don’t expect an extraordinary social presence and increased organic reach.
Second, let’s talk about branding. Today, genuine relationships will get you far on social. Build relationships with your audience, with your network of influencers, through brand collaborations and event networking. It is through all of the above that you will gather valuable data on what content to create on your brand’s page and, more importantly, for your audience.
To keep your content in the News Feed to gain organic reach, make sure it is engaging, entertaining, or educating.
Types of Content
The content that will gain organic reach is that of which is gaining engagement and interest. One way to achieve this is to incorporate engagement-driving content such as quotes, tips, and interactive content such as the example by Field Supply below.
This piece of content prompts your audience to take interest and comment on the post, which will then read in the algorithm as well-received content and therefore appear more in the News Feed or Timeline.
Another way to gain engagement is by thinking big picture and creating campaigns that relate to your brand and also your audience. For instance, take Infantino’s Everybody Plays campaign. This brand is passionate about all-inclusive marketing and created an entire campaign around it. The result: tons of engagement and an increase in like-minded followers.
When combating a decreasing organic reach, you may want to consider including a boosted budget into your social strategy. This will be the quickest, most direct way to compete.
This will not only increase your paid reach, but will help gain engagement and thus increase yourorganic reach over time as well – keeping your account nice and healthy!
Video content is continuing to drive more results on average. If you do not have the resources to create videos, consider creating GIFs or short, yet appealing slideshows. Here is another example of Infantino created a short video slideshow from it’s Everybody Plays event. According to OptinMonster, videos achieve a 54% increase in brand awareness – a main objective of Social Media.
Wrapping up
Although all of the above is undoubtedly true and very easy, proven tactics to help save organic reach, there is a chance that maybe your profile is just not good. An absolutely vital tip to take into consideration is how your social media presence is being perceived. For the most part, your content should be talking about your audience – not about your brand. In other words, 70% of your content should be engagement-based & for your audience, whereas the other 30% can be used to promote your brand and talk about yourself/product. To give a bit of context behind this rule, talk a look at Binet’s take on brand awareness versus sales-driven marketing.
If you are seeing dips in your organic reach, however small they may be, consider taking action now!
