Is organic reach dead on Facebook? I don’t think so! Today, I am sharing with you a few tips on how to boost your organic reach when it comes to Facebook.
Organic reach, for those of you who don’t know, is a way to get your Facebook content in front of more people without having to pay a lot of money for it. A lot of people are saying organic reach is dead. I disagree. I think it is not dead. But it is not necessarily the easiest thing to achieve. There’s a few things that can make a really big difference.
First of all, especially when you look at your Facebook business page, I want you to look at the type of content you’re posting. For all of my real estate friends, if you’re just posting listings, and if you’re just curating content, which means you’re just finding articles from other sources and sending the link, you’re probably not getting a lot of traction.
So how do you change that? The big thing I want to share with you is content. Video right now, as well as Facebook Live, are two of the best ways that you can increase your organic reach. You want to put out consistent video content. Pick a day and stick with it. For the last 15 or 16 months, we have been publishing video on a consistent basis every Wednesday. When you publish content on a consistent basis, it makes a big difference, especially with your organic reach on Facebook.
We will publish that on YouTube, but for Facebook specifically, we’ll upload that video directly into Facebook. Now, I usually will boost that video and do a little bit of advertising with that video. Before we do that, we let that video kind of marinate in the news feed. I like to let it marinate for at least a few hours, sometimes 24 hours, before we put any kind of dollars behind it.
We try to get as much organic reach as possible. What helps getting reach on a video? Well, having a good title, having something that’s catchy, catching peoples’ attention right away. Having tags on your video. Having captions over the bottom of the video. If you’re watching this on Facebook, you’re probably reading the captions that are running along the bottom right now. Those little things can make a big difference in increasing your organic reach.
The other thing that makes a big difference with your organic reach is where that content is getting shared. One of the things that we try to do when it comes to our content is where can I share that? For example, if I have a video that comes out Wednesday, I will share that again a couple days later. I will also share that within our Facebook groups. I will share that in our e-mail newsletter. I will share it in a number of different places. That shareability helps to get the word out.
Speaking of our e-mail newsletter, one of the things that we try to do is at least a few times a month with our weekly e-mail newsletter, is we will share links to conversations that are happening on Facebook. If I post something on Facebook, maybe it’s my Facebook Live that I did, or maybe it’s a video, or maybe it’s a link to an article, whatever it might be, when I’m e-mailing my database, I will say, “Hey, check out this conversation that’s happening over on my Facebook page.” So driving traffic specifically not just to my page, but to a specific link within my page.
For those of you who don’t know this, when you go to your Facebook business page, and you click on that little time and date stamp, so maybe you post something March 1st, 2:00pm, when you click on that, that will open that post into a separate window, and it will give you a separate URL for that particular post.
We do this a lot of times with Twitter. Sometimes I do this with Snapchat, if I’m talking about something on Snapchat, and I want to direct people to a conversation that’s happening on my Facebook business page, I will do it that way. We’ll also send that link through e-mail.
The other big tip I’m going to give you when it comes to Facebook organic reach is, no surprise here, but you’ve got to be consistent. The people who are posting consistently on a daily basis, either once a day or twice a day, are usually going to get more organic reach. So look at your Facebook insights. Look to see when are people online the most who like your page, whether it’s 9:00am or 6:00pm, and then structure your content around that. Look to see when people are online, and then that’s when you should schedule a little bit of your content. Don’t over schedule things, don’t automate. It’s not set it and forget it, but really get into a consistent rhythm with your content.
The last thing I’m going to mention, kind of a bonus tip here, is that it is about Facebook Live right now. One of the best ways to build your organic reach, if you do nothing else what I’m talking about right here, is to do Facebook Live content. When you’re creating Facebook Live content, you’re engaging people in real time. You’re more likely to get likes and comments and hearts and reactions, and it can make a huge difference.
If you’re doing Facebook Live and not getting a whole lot of traction, I want you to ask yourself, are you pre-promoting that Facebook Live? Are you telling people about it ahead of time? You’ve got to promote it the day before or the morning of, either through Facebook or other social channels, e-mail marketing. It’s all about the pre-promotion to get the most out of that Facebook Live, and then afterwards, it’s about the post-promotion.
I wanted to give you a few really key tips here, because I see agents and brokers who are kind of struggling with that organic reach, and they’re spending tons of money on Facebook ads. Facebook ads are important, that’s a whole other video. Just think about the fact that organic reach is key. It’s definitely attainable, but you’ve got to put the time and work in to make it happen.
I would love to hear from you. Are you struggling with organic reach? Are you having any challenges when it comes to getting people seeing your Facebook content? Leave me your feedback in the comments below. I would love to hear from you!
