Get more organic reach with your Facebook posts

Do you ever notice how when you post to your business Facebook page, sometimes hardly anyone sees your post? There’s very little interaction. Guess what? That’s not an accident; that’s by design. Facebook doesn’t want businesses to generate free traffic. They want you to pay for that reach.

And unfortunately, a lot of small businesses don’t have the budget for a Facebook ad campaign, especially when they don’t understand the incredibly complicated Facebook ads system. (Boosting a post is easy, running actual Facebook ad campaigns… that’s hard.)

Always remember that you don’t have a Facebook page for your business. Facebook has a page with your business’s name on it, and they own it and they can control it.

Folks tell business owners that they need to use social media, then they get on Facebook and make posts, and nothing happens, so they quit and end up with an empty Facebook page, which is no good. Luckily, I have a few tips that may increase your Facebook reach and get your brand in front of more of your audience, instead of languishing away with a handful of views.

Vary your content

The biggest mistake business owners make when it comes to their Facebook presence is that they the same type of content over and over, usually just the specials or deals or blog post from their business. And this content absolutely needs to be shared, but it can’t be ALL you share. You need to mix it up. Facebook has all kinds of ways to share content. Here are a few.

Go Live

Consider doing a live video on Facebook. These get more organic reach because they are interactive. Use Facebook Live to do video tours of your business, showcase work you’ve completed, do virtual open houses, give tutorials, do an AMA (ask me anything) or interview clients about their experiences. There is no end to the topics you can discuss on a Facebook live.

However, you can’t just open your phone and go live and expect people to show up. If you’ve ever joined a FB Live right when it started, you’ve probably noticed what seems like an endless amount of time of the person just chitchatting waiting for people to show up. “Hi Joe, thanks for joining. We’re going to wait a few more minutes, see if anyone else shows up.” Well, while you are waiting, other people are leaving because they are bored, and that’s not what you want.

To have successful Facebook Live videos, planning is essential. You need to plan the day and time you’re going to go live, and then start promoting it. Send an email blast, share it on other social platforms, share it on Facebook, do Instagram stories. You want to blast that info out there so when you do the Facebook Live video, people know it’s going on.

The other thing that’s important is to be ready to go live with your content. Some people are really talented improvisers. I am most certainly not, so I need to be prepared and you probably should too. Know what you are going to say, what info you want to share. If you plan to show products, get those ready. Make sure your microphone is working well (I recommend a real mic, not your phone mic) and your light is good. Not only will this make the live event better, it’ll be better for all engagements after the event.

Use Facebook Stories

Facebook stories are short user-generated photo and video collections that can be viewed up to two times and disappear after 24 hours. This is a copy of what Snapchat was already doing (and honestly an attempt to steal Snapchat’s audience). Facebook is prioritizing live video and stories, and you will definitely get more reach by using it, especially in a short window of time.

Here are some tips for getting the most out of your Facebook stories:

• Show your personality. A business is a business, but it’s also your business, and people generally like it when a business owner is personable and has charisma.
• Ask questions. Fun fact, the more engagement a post has, the more engagement it will continue to get. The Facebook algorithm seems people interacting with your story and thinks, ‘Oh, people like this’ so they show it to more people. Asking questions gets people involved.
• Answer questions. Do you get a lot of the same questions a lot? Use your stories to answer those questions. Say yes to FAQs in a Facebook story.
• Share great photos and success stories from your clients. People LOVE a good before and after photo!
• Post consistently so there’s always new content.

Create polls

Engagement is the name of the game, and asking questions that require answers gets people engaged. Use the Facebook poll feature to survey your audience. (Note, polls are no longer available in regular posts, only in stories.)

Cultivate your audience

If you aren’t getting engagement from your audience, it might be that your audience isn’t great. Ever see those ads claiming to get you 1,000 followers for $5? Never do that. Random followers mean nothing and will not help your business.

There are ways you can start to create a good audience for your business Facebook page, and the first step is using the “Invite” feature people you know. That can be friends, clients, past customers, your newsletter subscribers. Be proactive and take action by inviting them to like your page.

Plenty of folks are happy to give you a like if you ask them. And the worst thing that can happen is that they don’t accept. However, the most folks who know your work and follow you, the more likely you are to get engagement from those people, and if they are engaging with your content, then their friends are more likely to see that engagement and so on and so forth. Engagement creates more engagement. So go ahead and invite people to like your page. It’s okay.

Share your business page in your personal Facebook news feed. Guess what, your friends probably like you and your business and would be happy to like it. And then their friends can see that engagement too….

An audience of 100 followers who are interested in your services is better than 1,000 followers who aren’t.

Share content from others

Be a good steward of the Internet, and don’t just share your own content, share content from others as well. A lot of times there are super relevant posts from other sources that could engage your audience as well. One of the best things you can do on social media as a business owner is to provide a wealth of content that people want to read, and sometimes, that content is from other sources.

When you share others’ content, they are more likely to share yours too.

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A few other Dos and Donts for your Facebook page

• DO be consistent. Share a variety of content on a regular basis to keep your brand in front of your audience.
• DON’T only auto-post. I love a good automation, and everyone who knows me know that. And yes, all my blog posts auto-post to social media, but don’t make that the only social posting you do.
• DO share different types of content. Do photo galleries, links to great news stories, polls, events, specials.
• DON’T include a link to your website in every post. Your post with a link will get shown less than one without.
• DO post at different times and different says. Posting at the same time and on the same day every week will likely get you the same result. Mix it up and see when you get the most engagement.
• DON’T post political posts. (Unless you are a politician.) In these divided times, it’s best to keep your business apolitical.
• DO be funny. If you can make people laugh, then you are likely to get more engagement.

One last thing that is a must…

Respond to comments!

If someone leaves you a comment or engages with your content, always respond to it.