How’s your business Facebook page performing? Are you finding you’re getting less reach & engagement on your posts than in the past?
This could be down to the Facebook algorithm… but don’t worry, Fastnet founder Sarah is here to help!
We’ve got 5 top tips to help you beat the Facebook algorithm & boost your business page on Facebook reach in 2021!
Scroll down for the transcript if you prefer to read rather than watch, and as always, feel free to share this with any small business owners you know who may benefit from our top tips.
We’ll have a new episode each week, which will appear here & on our YouTube channel (if you subscribe there you won’t miss one).
Got questions about anything in the video? Drop us a line or give us a call at Fastnet HQ.
Video Transcript:
“So Facebook can be such a valuable tool when it comes to growing online brands, but it’s getting increasingly difficult to get good organic reach for your business Facebook posts.
If you’re struggling to reach your audience through Facebook, these are my five top tips to increase your organic reach, so stay tuned.
So, for the best advice on how to grow your ecommerce brand quickly and profitably, subscribe to our videos, hit the bell so get notifications. We post a new video all about growing your ecommerce brand every single week.
So I’m Sarah, founder of The Fastnet Agency, and we love helping ambitious, up-and-coming ecommerce brands to scale their sales online. So follow me for more great tips and advice.
So first up; What is organic reach? Well, organic reach is basically just the people that you reach without paid advertising, just purely based on your regular Facebook posts. So why is your organic reach declining?
Well, the first thing is that there’s just more & more & more content being pushed out there on Facebook, which means that your content is more likely to be moved to the bottom off the pile.
So did you know that there are over 30 billion pieces of content posted on Facebook every single month? I know, it’s mind blowing, isn’t it? But you can see why, with that much content out there, it can be easy to get just lost in the quagmire of stuff that goes on to Facebook.
So the second reason is that Facebook only pushes the most relevant content to its users. It wants people to like and engage with the content that they see on their feed, and so if it knows that person is interested in a particular piece of content, or content like that, it’s more likely to promote that content to them.
So if somebody has actively engaged with your page, commented on your page, liked your page, then they’re much more likely to see your content than somebody that hasn’t done that.
So the trouble is that over time, if you’re not getting a lot of engagement, it means that Facebook is pushing your content out to less and less and less people, and that, in turn, means that your organic reach declines quite dramatically.
So if organic reach is declining, is Facebook still a good option for your business? Well, absolutely, It’s still the largest social media platform out there, there’s loads of people waiting to see your brand and become engaged with what you do.
So really, it’s something that you need to persevere with. It can be frustrating, but definitely Facebook could be a great way to grow your brand online, so you just need to stick with it.
Step one is to really understand what the algorithm is trying to achieve. I think this with all of these platforms, if you can understand what the algorithm is looking to achieve, then you can work to that and you can start producing content that is fitting what the algorithm wants.
So as Adam Mosseri, VP of the News Feed at Facebook said that they based the priority of content on four key principles or four key steps.
The first step is what are you and your immediate closest connections looking at and engaging with on Facebook? And that will be the first thing that Facebook looks at when it comes to prioritising content for your feed.
The second thing it will look at is who posted the story? Is this somebody you’ve engaged with very recently? Is this a brand you’ve engaged with recently? Is this somebody that you showed an active interest in? And if you have, then again, that will be a factor as to whether or not Facebook prioritises that content to your feed.
The first thing it looks at is how likely you are to comment on a story. If you commented on certain types of content but not other types of content, then it will prioritise the content that you’ve commented on on your feed.
So that’s what it’s trying to look out when it’s prioritising what you see within Facebook. And finally, it will look at a relevance score. How relevant does it think that this content is to you?
For example, if Facebook knows that you’ve recently got married, or you’ve recently had a baby, or any of these big, life, kind of, changing, sort of moments, then it will actively prioritise content that taps into that relevance.
So it’s always looking to find things for your feed that is most relevant to you. So how does this affect you as a business? Well basically the more your audience interacts with your content, the more they will see of your content, so the trick to break the cycle, to break the algorithm and get it to work for you is to ensure that the content you produce provokes a reaction.
It gets people to like, it gets people to comment, it gets people to tag other people. You want to be trying to aim to get those posts out there regularly that encourage engagement.
And the more engagement you get, the more your post will be pushed organically on Facebook.
And the more they will post organically, the more comments you get, and it’ll become a cycle that works for you rather than against you. So my step second tip is to use stories regularly. If you can, try and post a story at least once a day.
Because if people are watching your stories, if your followers are watching your stories, then that is a form of engagement. And if Facebook sees that that engagement is there and that people were interacting with you, again, that will tie into the algorithm that they’re trying to work with and again that will boost your organic reach.
Now, one of the key indicators that Facebook will have as to whether or not your audience are enjoying your stories is how long they watch them for, how long they engage with them, whether they tap, whether they click.
So try and make them interesting. Try and make them something that you know your audience is going to look forward to seeing. So, get in front of the camera, and do to-camera pieces, give them a little tour of what you’ve got in stock at the moment, Give them product tours, ask some questions, do polls…
Use all those interactive elements that Facebook provides in order to keep your audience engaged with your stories, and that, in turn, will help you to boost your organic reach.
Okay, so the third one is rather than a do, this is a don’t… Ok, don’t be tempted to buy followers through slightly dodgy means. So various people advertising that, you know, they will boost your Facebook page by 5000 followers.
You know, you can go to Fiverr and search, and you will find various people offering to do this service for you. The only way that you should look to pay for followers is by using Facebook’s ‘page like’ advertising option, and that is in turn a really good way to boost your Facebook following.
But don’t be tempted to use sort of shady tactics to do this, because what research has found is that if you do that, not only do you stand the risk of Facebook striking off your Facebook page and removing all those followers anyway, but it also runs the risk you’ll get absolutely no organic reach after that, so you will be heavily penalised for it.
So please try to avoid doing this at all costs. Now, quick question… Are you trying to grow your Facebook page? How much interaction do you get? Have you found the organic reach has really dropped recently? I’d love to know what your experience is, so pop a comment below and let’s get the conversation going.
Now, number four is to try to understand what people are engaging with in terms of your content.
Again, this is all about tying into that algorithm and trying to make sure that people engage as much as possible, and one of the ways you can ensure that you get maximum engagement is to monitor the posts that you’re putting out and to have a clear understanding of what’s working for your audience and what isn’t.
When you post your content, don’t just click and forget, go back and see what’s been popular? What’s had the most amount of likes? What’s had the most amount of comments? What’s had the most amount of engagement?
Okay, and then try and replicate more of that content on a regular basis. What you will find is that every page is different. Every page has a different, sort of, ‘sweet spot’ as to the sort of content they’re putting out.
So if you’re actively monitoring this, you will find that some content performs significantly better than others, and that will allow you to develop your content in a way that will best work, both for the algorithm, and for the audience.
Now, my fifth tip for getting more organic reach on Facebook is to create a Facebook group. Now these can be brilliant ways of tapping into a target demographic if done well. The best way to think of a group is about creating a community based around a particular topic, and that topic, obviously, is going to be something you can then tap into for sales reasons.
So, for example, if you’re running an ecommerce store based around hiking equipment, you could create a group all around hiking in the UK.
People can then engage with each other, find out the best spots, the best tips, you know they can share their stories, share their experiences. It becomes a community and a group which is very much about the group’s members and about nurturing that community, which is obviously non-sales based, but what that allows you to do as the group owner is to dip in and out of conversations, offer advice, offer guidance.
And, of course, that will provide many opportunities to sell your products. So people really engage with these groups. They feel that they’re much more personal than just, you know, following a brand on Facebook because it’s aligned with their interests. So sometimes creating & nurturing a Facebook group can be a really good way to grow your organic reach on Facebook.
So I release a new video every Thursday on how to grow your ecommerce brand, so hit the subscribe button, click the bell to be notified every week when I post a new video. I really hope you found this helpful.
So if you want to find out a bit more about growing your website traffic then we’ve got a great video over here that explains everything you need to know about expanding your traffic. And if you’re looking to grow your Instagram account as well as your Facebook account, then check out this video over here with my top tips for how to grow organically on instagram.”
