Increase Your Facebook Post Reach

Why Aren’t All My Followers Seeing My Facebook Posts?

Here is a question that I am often asked. A business page may have 10,000 followers but most of the posts struggle to reach 25% of this. Sometimes lower than 10%.

There are many reasons that your posts aren’t doing so well now on Facebook.

Their algorithms were changed recently which saw a huge post reach drop for many.

Why Did Facebook Change?

The reason is that Facebook is a business. They want business from your business. This means encouraging you to boost a post and pay for sponsored ads.

This isn’t a bad thing. Paying for ads to appear on Facebook can actually be very rewarding. They allow you to specify a whole list of criteria as to who should see your advert.

This includes age, gender, geographical location, interests, hobbies, work… the list goes on.

To summarise this: If you are a 52 year old man living in Glasgow, you are unlikely to see adverts in your news feed for nail salons in Cardiff. However if Facebook realises that you drive to Cardiff regularly and like getting your nails done! You will be delivered these ads when Facebook knows that you are on the way down there. That’s how effective Facebook is at targeted advertising. (OK bad example maybe, but you get the idea. It’s clever, pinpoint stuff).

The next time you scroll through your own personal Facebook news feed, take a conscious look at the sponsored ads that appear in your news feed.

Due to popularity and targeted accuracy of Facebook ads campaigns, they had to do something to cut down on the non-paid ads.

Until recently it was a free-for-all. So scrolling through your own news feed was a mixture of actual paid for sponsored ads, mixed in with the free-for-all of every business you have ever clicked like on.

Every man & his dug were plugging their wares!

Too much Spam - cut it down

Facebook would have ended up spammier than the spam isle at your local spam shop. You cannot blame them for introducing tighter measures.

Generating Good Facebook Posts

If you make amazing content that engages your audience, you can still reach very impressive post reach numbers organically.

There are some very complex and ever changing algorithms at work on Facebook. There is no definitive answer but there are good practices to follow.

  • Make interesting & engaging content.
  • Don’t always use the sell, sell, sell approach.
  • When posting images – follow the FB 20 Rule. This means if an image contains over 20% text, Facebook will flag it and it could struggle to achieve good post-reach.
  • Use video content.
Facebook 20% Text Rule

So Why Bother Getting All Those Likes?

It is definitely still worth gaining more likes on Facebook. If your page has 1000 likes and a typical post reaches 100 people under the 10% theory. This means that if you can build your page likes up to 5000, each organic post will hit the 500 mark.

Some posts (the engaging ones and the “lucky” unexpected ones) will excel. I have worked on pages with 5000 likes that occasionally hit 10,000+ organic post reach. This is still possible but less likely to happen now than just a few short years ago.

Ways To Promote A Page On Facebook

Use Facebook Live. Get in front of the camera and talk to your audience. Give them a weekly update on your business. Give them some useful advice relating to your industry. Allow a live Q & A session to answer enquiries. Facebook Live works and delivers big audience numbers. (Example: If you are a plumber and the freezing nights are starting – get on to Facebook Live and advise your followers with some quick tips to prevent the pipes from freezing. Do not worry that this will not lose you work – this will boost your reputation and gain exposure as a reputable tradesman. The post will receive likes & shares and your audience will grow).

Encourage people to check-in at your location. This is an old-school method that is still effective. Arguably more effective than “Share”.

Don’t Sell, Sell, Sell. A tip that we listed above. Not every post on your page should be the hard sell of self-promotion. Be creative. If you make cakes, record time-lapse videos of cakes being iced. Post “just-for-fun” content. Fresh, fun, inspiring content works. This will increase interactivity on your page and encourage others to join.

Out Of The Box Methods. The original and unusual posts can achieve big numbers.

I recently ran a mock interview video with a publican. On camera he told us how excited he was for the week ahead and went on to mention all the offers and live football that was coming up over the forthcoming week.

This premises had 8,000 followers. The video reached 14,000 people. The page gained 500+ new likes within a week.

This is a one-off example of thinking creatively about Facebook posts.

This is what I do. By outsourcing your social media I can increase your likes, post reach and enhance your brand with professional graphics and videos.

Competitions. Imagination is required here. The old “Like & Share this” to be entered into a draw to win some naff prize is a tired method.

That said, if you offer good prizes that people will want or prizes that money can’t buy can be hugely effective.

Example: Keep an eye on concerts that are coming up in the next 6 months. Let’s say Cher will be doing one night in Glasgow. It is likely that it will sell out and if you manage to grab a pair of tickets for that and put them on as prizes, this post could go viral. For the cost of approx. £100 for the 2 tickets, you gain £1000’s worth of advertising. I have seen this work recently with Lewis Capaldi tickets. The post from a licensed premises in Clydebank ended up reaching almost half-a-million people!

Boosting Posts

If you run your own business page on Facebook, you will be very familiar with the “Sponsored – Only You Can See This – Boost Post” feed item.

Boost a post or not.

I actually encourage using this service occasionally. If the event, service or offer will pay for itself by boosting the post, then boost it.

I discourage the use of this method too often. It can end up being a very costly exercise as well as making your brand look quite spammy. Resulting in Unfollows.

Conclusion

I’m going to finish this article with a rather harsh fact. Facebook don’t owe you a living. There were a lot of companies that were hit hard by the change in their algorithms around 2018.

These companies were enjoying the free ride and many made the mistake of becoming reliant, of “putting all their eggs in the same basket”. Many of whom never boosted a single post. Never paid into the pot that provided a free platform to advertise their wares.

This doesn’t mean that Facebook should be avoided now. In fact, the opposite. Facebook is still an incredibly important part of marketing.

It’s there. They don’t charge to host all of the stuff you upload. They have 1.5 billion + users.

You definitely need to have an active presence on Facebook.

It’s just time to get smart on how to use it.