You built a Facebook page for your business and gained a substantial amount of followers, but when it comes to making a post you end up waiting for likes and comments that never come. Was it something you said? Well, not exactly. Organic post reach on Facebook has been declining fast and it is becoming virtually impossible to get followers to see your content without paying to promote it. So it isn’t that your customers don’t like what you are posting; they just can’t see it.
Why is this happening?
Facebook is growing. More users are posting a variety of content on Facebook and a wider variety of content is Facebook appropriate (e.g. trending news and viral video). With such an increased amount of content, Facebook has more choice to make in regards to what content a user will see and what content will be left out. The Facebook algorithms will select posts based on how interesting they think the user will find the content. A business page is the type of account most likely to spam users with content that they do not want to see; and will more often than not find its posts pushed to the bottom of the pile if the posts aren’t structured to beat the algorithms.
Facebook (similar to other searchable indexesthat are overloaded with content) selects content to display on an individual’s news feed based on over 100,000 complex analytical data readings relating to what a user, or the majority users interact with; i.e. does the user want interact more with videos or news stories? Photographs or posts from business pages?
What can I do?
The first answer is to keep at it
As the algorithms work to show Facebook users what they want to see; try to do exactly that. Post a variety of content in order to assess the types of content that get the most engagement. The type of posts that get the most engagement will most likely be the type that Facebook determines relevant enough to display on your follower newsfeeds. The higher the engagement with your posts is, the more likely your future posts will be seen as interesting by the algorithms.
Pay attention to trending news
Is there something trending on the Facebook news sidebar that is relatable to the nature of your page? Join in and post about it too. This is content that the mysterious Facebook algorithms will be more likely to class as interesting to users. Posting about news that is not relevant to your followers, however, may lose some of them.
Time is of the essence
Schedule your posts for times that your followers are most likely to be on Facebook. Figuring out the most common times that your followers use Facebook is done using a combination of common knowledge and, of monitoring the times that you receive the most engagement. For example; if your target audience is stay at home mums the times that they get home from the school run and the peak times that your page receives user interaction would be the times most beneficial to post during. The times will vary from day to day and peak during different times of the year; this gives you many opportunities to attempt to target your audience with content.
The end game for Facebook seems to be to leave businesses with no choice but to pay to promote their posts. However with perseverance and an analytical approach, organic reach can certainly be improved.
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