How to reach more people? A couple of years ago when I started venturing into social media, the organic reach of Facebook posts was phenomenal. With a limited budget and a lot of work, even a small page could reach thousands of people with just one post. This concept caught my attention so much that I abandoned my plans to study dentistry and began to focus my attention on Facebook and Instagram.
Well, long gone are the days when our posts had almost viral reach by being scheduled on Facebook. Their algorithm has changed in recent years, favoring promoted (paid) posts, but even now there are a couple of tricks to maximize your reach. Tricks I’ve learned by practicing and implementing AB tests. Today I bring you these tactics to improve your organic reach.
What does it take to reach more people?
You probably have what it takes to reach more people and you haven’t realized it. I consider that to analyze the functioning of a Facebook page you will need 3 resources:
Content
Your content is the key piece in your strategy to reach more people, but this concept goes beyond having images, videos and text messages for your posts. One of the most important features is that different social networks are going to have different audiences. These different audiences are going to have unique needs and require exclusive content for these segments. That is, while it is possible, I would not recommend using one of your YouTube videos for your Facebook page.
Another thing about your posts that we need to remember is that native content gets preference when served by the Facebook algorithm. This means that content that is published and uploaded directly to Facebook will be preferable to content that uses a link to bring content to the platform. The explanation is very simple, Facebook wants you to stay on the site as long as possible, so the algorithm will give more importance to native content.
What if you want to drive traffic to your website from Facebook? What I would recommend is that you write your publication, upload an image to Facebook and include a link in the content of your publication. Try to remove any kind of foreign content except for your link from the post. This way, your image won’t act as a hyperlink, but the URL within your post will still direct clicks to your website. If you use this format, Facebook will classify your publication as an image type and thus you will be able to reach more people. TIP: Place the link in your first lines of text, remember that if your audience does not see it, you will not have traffic for your website.
Evaluation form of your Facebook page
If you want to reach more people, the statistical study of your social networks will be very effective in understanding the behavior of your audience. With this type of analysis you will be able to understand variables such as: 1) When is the best time to post, 2) What type of posts receive more interaction (likes, shares, etc.) or 3) Which posts bring more traffic to your website.
Once you have collected this information for a couple of weeks, taking into account that you do not change your variables, you will be able to do your data analysis. With this information I have evaluated the interactions of the Hootsuite Facebook page over a period of several months. The type of analysis that I have done includes a regressive analysis to make a forecast of how the interactions are going to increase during 2017. In this way I can do several AB tests, introducing new variables such as: one more post per day, or use video Instead of photos from this way, I can see the change relative to the forecast I made with my initial regression. This kind of analytics helps me put my work in numbers, which can be tricky in the social media industry. In any case, this is just a type of analysis, you can take averages to see the most efficient publication time, or simply evaluate which posts can reach the most people.
Interactions
This last point is going to connect the last two elements in your strategy to reach more people with your Facebook page. One of the best ways to increase your organic reach is by discovering new audiences. In my experience, the two best ways to do this, without incurring an economic cost, are: 1) Use hashtags. 2) Make your posts shareable.
Using hashtags has the advantage that you are reaching people who may be completely outside of your circle of influence. Either way, as we know from marketing, a personal recommendation is always going to be the most effective content delivery system for getting someone to consider using a product or service. Yes, I am referring to the concept known as “Word of mouth”.
Having one of your follower’s share your post is the equivalent of a person recommending a product to a friend. In contrast to using Hashtags, being shared allows you to be introduced to new people within a second degree circle (Friends of Friends). I prefer to discover audiences in this way since friends tend to have the same tastes, so my publication will be more effective if I built it with that target market in mind, although why not use both? Using the analysis of the second point, you will be able to determine which publications have the best behavior index, what type of content you need, etc.
In my opinion, using these three points to reach more people with your Facebook page can only be done if you have the right tools. If you are an entrepreneur and do not have the financial resources to buy data analysis software or even Excel, do not worry because you can achieve your goals completely free. I use Google spreadsheet (Free) to keep track of my posts. Within the Google Sheet download statistical data analysis plugins (also free), although you can only use the formulas provided by Google. I finally use Hootsuite to manage all my campaign posts.