If you’ve been keeping your finger on the pulse of Facebook post reach in recent times, you may have noticed that the rules have been changed, yet again! At the beginning of the year, Facebook announced sweeping changes that would effect the ranking of business pages in the news feed. As with all things digital, we operate in an ever-changing landscape and sometimes there is the need to pivot. In a recent podcast, we explained our 5 ways to increase Facebook post reach.
1. see first function.
Using the “See First” function gives Facebook user’s the ultimate control over what they see in their news feeds. There’s no doubt that the Facebook news feed is a fight for prime real estate. Encouraging your followers to the select this function enables you to bypass all other content in their news feed, regardless to how the posts are actually performing. In our opinion, it’s as close to hacking the algorithm as it gets.
Obviously there needs to be some incentive to your followers to select the “See First” function. Running competitions that are time sensitive can be a great idea. You could offer prizes for answering questions within 60 seconds of posts appearing on your page. So that they don’t miss out, they would need require notifications to give them a chance of winning. Limited edition productions and promotions can work well, but also remember, you still need to post quality content to keep your audience engaged, which brings us to point 2.
the "see first" function walkthrough.
2. quality over quantity.
Content is king, but poor quality is a dunce! While keeping up consistency with your posting is important, if your content isn’t quality, then you’ll do more damage than good. Now more than ever, Facebook is doing it’s best to ensure the best and most relevant content is given space on user’s newsfeed. If you’re posting lots of irrelevant content, the algorithm will punish you now more than ever!
Studying your data is a great way to help this situation. Your insights provide relevant information as to which types of posts are performing well on your page. In general, video tends to trump ever other type of content, but don’t neglect pictures, status updates or shared links completely. Take a good look at what’s been working for you and try to do more of the same.
3. setting up a facebook group.
Our third suggestion for boosting your Facebook post engagement is setting up a group. These can be lots of work, but those who put in the efforts here reap the benefits. In recent times, Facebook added the ability to create a group within your business page. Where posts can be lost easily on pages, they tend to be seen more frequently within groups. Other people within groups are notified when users post, giving your brand air time in the notifications centre.
The difficult part of groups, is the resources that it takes to run one successfully. While they are definitely worth their time, managing a page and ensuring it provides quality content is nearly a full-time job. Should you be able to push through these beginning stages though, Facebook groups can hit a critical mass where they can be fairly automated. At this point the main objective would be to moderate the group, like forums in the 2000s.
Our prediction: In time Facebook will give group owners the ability to make an audience around these people and advertise to them. Generally when Facebook pushes certain features like this, it’s a fairly safe bet that an opportunity to monetise both for Facebook and for business owners is approaching.
4. live videos.
Facebook Live is another feature that is being used heavily to increase post engagement. Remember how we said normal videos trumped all content in general? Well live videos average 6 times the interactions that normal videos receive. We went more in depth on reasons why you should use Facebook Live in a recent blog.
Live videos encourage more engagement due to their authentic nature and the fact that user’s can engage with the brands they follow in real time. This is a great opportunity especially for service based industries to break down barriers, answer questions and put a face to their businesses.
5. increase your facebook ads budget.
We’re lucky in this day and age to have the options that Facebook’s incredible targeting offers us. In years gone by, the only approach would have been mass marketing, which can be a spray and pray approach at best. Paying to take advantage Facebook’s amazing targeting options and the right to reach their audience via news feeds is something all businesses should be doing anyway.
At the end of the day, Facebook encourages engagement, so those who do all they can to facilitate this on their platforms will be rewarded. If you have a post that has done quite well, you have the opportunity to continue that great engagement by social proofing your post and putting ad spend behind that piece of content. We’ve covered social proofing your Facebook posts in another article if you’d like to know more about that. Generally speaking, this is a great opportunity to re-engage and promote content that you know has already performed well, which is worth putting ad spend behind
So now you know that any recent changes aren’t the end of the world and that they in fact, present some great opportunities for you to pivot with your strategy and make the most of your marketing efforts on social media!