PepsiCo was one of the first food and beverage brands in Thailand to drive conversion campaigns that aimed at encouraging e-commerce catalog sales. It has been gradually investing in branding campaigns across digital platforms especially on Facebook.
46% of their referral traffic comes from social media and Facebook alone accounts for 41.2% of that traffic
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- What is Facebook organic reach?
- Why is Facebook organic reach declining?
- Understanding the Facebook algorithm
- How to track your current organic reach?
- Tips for dealing with the declining Facebook organic reach change
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Facebook is marketer's favorite because of the large audience base, i.e., 2.41 billion monthly active users, including 1.59 billion daily active users. It is indicative of the tremendous amount of time spent by the customers on this global social-connectivity medium. Businesses can market a variety of products because of the availability of different age groups from baby boomers to Gen Z at one place.
Other than the above statistics, Facebook's ad spent cost has decreased by 2% and impressions have made a rise of 34%, which makes it more ideal as an advertising platform. Moreover, it is the cheapest form of advertising available on the internet.
But the problem prevails for the small businesses who do not have much to spend on the advertising budget. Still, they have an option to market and promote their services and products with Facebook organic reach.
What is Facebook organic reach?
Facebook organic reach is a metric that represents the number of unique accounts that have seen your content without the use of paid distribution.
The issue marketers across the platform are facing is - not getting the required impressions for the content they post. It exhibits that the Facebook organic reach is declining and it is no more free of cost. You have to spend a bit to boost the visibility of your posts on Facebook.
Why is Facebook organic reach declining?
No doubt, with such a widespread active audience on Facebook, the content on everyone's newsfeed will be immense. Hence, marketers will be striving for that one spot for their post on the user's newsfeed.
As a result, newsfeed has converted into a battleground as the competition is at its peak. Marketers want to spread their content over the 1.59 billion active users. So, every marketer is running behind paid content, which is impacting the organic reach on a high level.
The amount of paid content has increased to a great extent, which has declined the organic reach of any post to around 5% of any page's total likes.
Before we move further, we must know the Facebook's news feed algorithm. So, let's explore exactly how it works!
Understanding the Facebook algorithm
The Facebook algorithm has gone through several changes since its arrival in 2006. Back then, it used to have a generic number for every type of post which was multiplied by the interactions that the post received. Later, the produced number would determine the position of the post in the news feed.
In 2011, Facebook improvized its algorithm and started prioritizing posts concerning relationships of the viewer and the publisher. It also began recognizing if the post is valid to show in the person's newsfeed by examining its recency in terms of time. And all this was possible only because of machine learning.
Recently, Facebook again revised its algorithm, which is based on these four factors:
- Inventory - The pool of content that is available for display.
- Signals - The points that decide the content of the post.
- Predictions - The estimated reactions of people on the content.
- Final Score - A number generated by the parameters mentioned above will define the position of content in the user's newsfeed.
The Facebook algorithm used today is a mixture of the above variations of terms and factors associated.
Now that we have understood the working of a Facebook algorithm, we can act on the improvements needed for a better organic reach. To do that, we must measure where we are currently!
How to track your current organic reach?
Through Statusbrew:
- Report section -> Facebook
In the reporting section, you will find all the insights of Facebook, including engagement, audience growth, impressions, etc.
- You can select date and time range of the period for which you want the analytics.
- You can compare your post reach with a particular time period too.
Through Facebook:
- Go to your Facebook page first and then select the Insights tab
- Click on Post reach from the given insights options
Tips for dealing with the declining Facebook organic reach change
1. Best content mix
The first and foremost step to deal with organic reach change is content. An ideal content mix of posts like educational, inspiring, entertaining, brand updates, conversational with variations in types like blog posts, infographics, stories, videos, etc. can help you engage more with your audience.
Once you have figured out the ideal content mix, Statusbrew can ease up the next step i.e., the step of distributing that content.
Statusbrew provides a content calendar for multiple social media platforms. It will help you to schedule content six months in advance, which gives a decent approach to the content mix and post consistency.
A rule that serves great in the process of creating a content calendar is - Social sharing 5:3:2 rule:
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50% of the content should be curated. It gives much relief because it saves time and effort to create new content and helps to keep your content calendar full.
Tip: An audience-related curated content will help you maintain conversations with audience and influencers around the trending topics.
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30% of the content should be original, which will require a lot of brainstorming and research for ideas. The idea behind the original content is serving useful and shareable knowledge, which will encourage more people to engage with the brand.
Tip: Creating evergreen content will prove beneficial for any business as it remains informative over a widespread period.
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20% of the content should contain human touch with fun and entertainment and other personalized content for your audience/followers. A brand should never be a faceless robotic corporation. It should bring out its unique personality that people could build a connection with.
Tip: This type of content will bring a lot of engagement but using more of it will degrade the brand reputation. So the right balance between content is a must.
The Facebook algorithm provides 10x post reach to native Facebook videos as compared to links, text, or image posts. So try to convert your content into video of around 4 to 5 minutes. This easy-to-use content format will help a great deal in gaining back your position in organic reach.
2. No more spray and pray
With such immense content in everyone's newsfeed, your content gets lost and invisible. Try to target an audience that will make a difference in your leads and sales.
A higher number of publishing frequency will not at all assist you in increasing the organic reach. It will do nothing if your content quality is not good enough, i.e., not appealing to your audience and relevant to your brand.
Tip: Prefer quality of content over its quantity and have the right publishing frequency
3. Facebook Live
Live videos prove a success for every brand because of its potential to spark discussions and build excitement among the viewers.
80% of brands admit higher organic reach with Facebook Live videos over native videos
A subject that serves exceptionally well for Live videos is AMA (Ask Me Anything). It will help a brand to know more about what their audience wants and build a genuine relationship with them. Later, a brand can work on their potential customers' need and improve to convey the maximum worth.
4. No random publishing times
There is a never-ending stream of content on a Facebook news feed that is expecting attention from the followers. So its imperative to know how to stand-out and get most impressions on it.
Knowing the best posting time of content will solve the difficulty of more impressions and more engagement as it enhances the visibility and organic reach of your content.
Related: Best Times To Post On Different Social Media Channels
Remember, not every brand needs to have the same best posting time. You may have a different audience and thus different best times to post.
Statusbrew will help you out to get the customized best posting time for your brand as it automatically populates your content performance report.
Tip: You can ask your Facebook followers to like your content by clicking on the Pages option on the left sidebar of the news feed.
This option will let the user see content from all the invited, suggested, liked, and its own Facebook page (if any).
5. Engagement first
Social engagement is not limited to increasing 'likes' or 'followers' of a profile or page. It is more about conversing with prospective customers and later convert them through calls, visits, demo, or any other call-to-action.
Moreover, it will benefit your business' social proof and brand awareness, which will cut the cost of traditional advertisements.
Tip: Ask your coworkers to engage with your posts through comments
Encouraging your coworkers, friends, and family to engage with your content will boost the number of people who share your posts. Sharing of content will naturally improve your Facebook organic reach.
Also, Facebook will consume these posts better because its algorithm favors relationships of the viewer and the publisher.
6. Indulge in Facebook groups
It is another excellent way to boost your Facebook organic reach. Publishing content in the brand-related groups will share your content with a relevant and interested audience.
It will eventually increase engagement and posts clicks and help you find prospective clients easily. Such groups prove extraordinary for improving your organic reach, yet additionally boost your email marketing list, and establish brand genuineness.
Tip: You can start by creating your own Facebook group with like-minded users
7. Give ads a chance
Targeting social media posts assure that they reach the right set of people. Boosting posts for a selective bunch of audience who are expected to engage with your post is the best way to increase your impressions and engagement.
Boosting the organic content of good quality and serving it to appropriate buyers based on their gender, age, qualification, area, and interest will bring shares, comments, and likes. Hence, increasing your content reach.
A case study on PepsiCo demonstrated that they got 3.7x increase in return on ad spend, which gave a successful conversion rate of 15%.
Statusbrew has made running an ad a piece of cake for their customers. You can boost any post that is already published or can create a new one. The only requirement is, having a Facebook ad account that is linked to the app.
You can even experiment with dark post's advertisement. It solely depends on the product or service you are offering.
Dark posts are targeted ads on social media, but they don't appear on your timeline like organic posts. They also don't show up in the feeds of your followers. They are formally known as unpublished posts.
It is totally up to you whether you want to boost organic content or create a dark post, Statusbrew helps you with both. Set your campaign name, targeting audience and budget, and your ad is live!
Infographic
Here's a detailed infographic on tips to deal with declining Facebook organic reach.
Citation Policy: Please feel free to use this infographic in any commercial or non-commercial capacity. If you use the infographics, we require a reference back to Statusbrew Blog.
Conclusion
The organic reach of Facebook is nonetheless an influential advertising tool and a thoughtful way of spreading awareness. With the aid of the guidelines mentioned above and also with the help of Statusbrew app, one can take in command the Facebook organic reach of the product/service that they are providing.
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