If you’re looking for ways to improve your Facebook reach in 2021, give yourself a big pat on the back. Not only are you active in trying to grow your business, but you also understand the basic concept of ‘reach’ when it comes to Facebook. Namely, that reaching people who follow your business Facebook page is by no means guaranteed when you pop something on your feed. In fact, it becomes less likely every year, as Facebook pushes businesses more and more towards ad spending, to ensure their messaging is seen.
There are ways to improve your reach (the number of people who see each post) which are reasonably simple. They are time consuming: there are no quick fixes here. But they’re not technical, and that’s the good news.
Some you may be aware of from past Facebook updates, some are new. You can find more, broader update information at our ‘Latest News on Social Media for 2021’ post right HERE. We’d love to know which you’ve tried, and what results you’ve enjoyed, via the comments below!
Our Top 7 Ways to Improve Your Facebook Reach
- Encourage Engagement. This goes back to Marketing 101, where we think deeply about what your likely consumer wants / gets excited by / will find unique, and we serve it up to them. It seems simple, but many businesses forget that people turn to social media for a bit of light relief, and spam them relentlessly with brand messaging. Come up with content that is truly interesting, laugh-out-loud funny, newsy, share-worthy, inspiring or helpful. Your followers are much more likely to interact with it, and Facebook will reward you by placing it in more feeds.
- Produce Quality Content. We all know this, but some of us are guilty of not always sticking to it. NO blurry photos, people. No 20 second videos (unless on Stories). Keep the outbound links to a minimum – Facebook wants you to keep people on Facebook, not send them elsewhere.
- Time Your Posts. The best times to post have changed slightly, and are different for B2B and B2C businesses these days. Businesses looking to reach other businesses should post between 9am-2pm on Tues, Wed and Thurs each week. Businesses selling direct to consumers should aim to post around noon on Mon, Tues and Wed.
- Use the ‘See First’ Option. This is not one you’ll want to reach out to all followers for, but it’s something your friends who support your page and mega fans will likely be happy to do for you. It is, in essence, asking them to mark you as a ‘see first on my feed’ page so Facebook sees you’re important to them. All they need to do is to follow the instructions in this article
- Be Timely in Responding. Facebook HATES it when you don’t reply to people who messaged you via your page. They even get annoyed if you don’t respond to comments people make on your posts very soon afterwards. So stay on this. It can feel like a ball and chain, so consider sharing the task between team members, or outsourcing the community management if you need a digital detox.
- Use Advertisements. It seems counter-intuitive, right? To spend money on ads, to get your free posts to improve their strike rate? But Facebook doesn’t care where your new followers or new comments and likes come from. It only cares that this week, 20 new people followed your page, and you got a bunch of action on your posts. Ads allow you to keep the tap running on follower and engagement growth, and this makes FB happy.
- Use Hashtags. We know, it’s never been much of a ‘thing’ on Facebook, but the recommendation is to use a judiciously selected 8-15 hashtags on each post for best effect. Make 3-5 repetitive ones which are at the core of your brand and offering (e.g. #digitalmarketing would be one I’d use). Then make the remainder related to that specific post (eg #socialmediaupdate for this post).
Spend a little time doing these tasks each week and you’ll improve the number of people who see your posts slowly but surely.
Photo by Siri louis on Unsplash and Daria Nepriakhina on Unsplash