How Organic Social Media Impacts Your Marketing Strategy
By Black Bear Design on 05/30/2017
Hello again! It’s me Lauren, the Social Media Strategist here at Black Bear. Thanks for joining me for part 2 of how paid and organic reach can affect your business’ social media presence.
In my last blog, we discussed how to create a winning Facebook ad, which falls into the realm of paid reach. Paid reach is extremely important in your social media strategy, but it’s not the only part of the puzzle. In fact, 81% of marketers rely on organic marketing on social media, only 19% of marketers or businesses use paid reach. If you’re part of that 19% of people using paid ads on Facebook, you have that much higher of a chance of being heard. However, today I want to focus on that 81% of organic reach that’s going out and how we can optimize our organic material for the best results.
As I stated in the last blog, the typical newsfeed receives over 1,500 stories a day. Since engagement is the main goal on Facebook, their algorithm will limit the posts a viewer sees to roughly 300. Think of this like you have one or two moments to really make an impact on your followers since positing more won’t have a different outcome.
The Organic Algorithm
Source: Neil Patel
Facebook measures the importance of posts and pushes them into people’s news feeds based on the equation above. Of course, barring the fact that Facebook also uses specific demographic filters to choose what content to show you, the main algorithm is based on the following factors:
- Interest of the user
- Post performance
- Creator traction
- Type of post
- Recency of the post
By coming up with a strategy that nails each of these objectives, you’ll have a greater chance of being seen organically.
What you want to do to make the biggest organic hit on your follower’s algorithm is give them something engaging, quality, and shareable. This will ensure you break through their algorithm and more people see your post.
You see, when you publish something, Facebook might feed it to a small pool of your audience; sometimes as low as 1% of your followers. If those 1% of followers react to and engage with your post, the reach will broaden to more people and the proverbial flood gates will open. Your golden ticket here is to have people like and comment on your material so more people can see it.
Engagement, Engagement, Engagement.
The goal is all about engagement. So here are a few ways we can get those numbers up:
Post Insider Content! This is something I’m such a fan of. The highest numbers of engagement I get on my client’s social media, and even my personal social channels, stem from the human experience. Let people into your office. Post pictures of your team. Allow people to feel like there is a person behind the screen and not just an automated service pushing out curated content all week.
Post Evergreen Content. You may have heard the phrase “evergreen content” if you’ve ever worked in marketing or social media. Essentially, evergreen content is content that will never go stale – it continuously adds value to your audience’s life, such as FAQ’s, ‘History of…’ chronicles, how-to videos, or tutorials. These are all great ways to engage your audience and establish yourself as a leader in your field.
Use Targeted Posting! Facebook gives you the opportunity to target your organic posts to reach your desired demographic. This works a lot like a Facebook ad, but it’s completely free! You may have to unlock this feature in your settings, but once you do, you can start breaking through the static on the general news feed and land on the one’s that matter. This is an especially useful tip for smaller pages over bigger ones, Social Media Examiner found.
Check Your Frequency. This is a common tactic I, and even social media guru Neil Patel, do. My general strategy is, obiously, see what works! Try posting twice a week and then three times a week and see how your numbers fluctuate. What I generally recommend is having 2 posts a day queued up, whether you only want to post 3 days a week or 5. This allows for maximum reach because your morning audience might not be on at night and vice versa, or they could be in a different time zone and always miss your singular daily post.
Luckily, when you hire an agency like Black Bear Design, we’re happy to test and re-test, post, and schedule exactly the right organic content to get you noticed. We’d love to hear how these tips work for your strategy, so let us know in the comments! And if you’re ever looking for a dedicated partner to work on your social with and for you, please don’t hesitate to call!
