It’s frustrating when you share contents on Facebook and few or almost no one sees them, even when you have tons of fans. It’s common to hear bloggers complain that their Facebook page reach is dead even with hundreds of thousands of fans.
Poor engagements results into poor reach on Facebook. The Facebook Edgerank algorithm controls what shows up on people’s news feed. Facebook post reach depends on engagement on your posts such as LIKE, SHARE, COMMENTS and CLICKS.
Mark Zukerberg claimed it is in the interest of allowing only useful posts to show on our news feed and keep ‘spammy and invaluable’ contents out so we can socialize even better, though it looks more like a way to make people pay for promoted posts and advertising.
In the recent past we have witnessed a steady decline in the number of people who sees our posts, especially when it contains links or anything Facebook considers promotional. Low engagement means less people see your posts when you share them.
If you are one of those with thousands of fans but little or no reach when you share posts on Facebook or you just want to improve your Facebook post reach, then you need to do things differently. In this article, I am going to share some tips to help you improve Facebook post reach without spending money.
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It might interest you to know that while your Facebook reach is nothing to write home about, some brands and bloggers are still getting huge organic Facebook reach even without spending a dime. In this article I want to share some of the things they may be doing right that you ain’t to improve their Facebook post reach without spending money.
Tips to improve Facebook Post Reach without spending money:
1. Contents: You definitely won’t be surprised at this one, content remains the KING in both Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Social Media Optimization (SMO). To improve your Facebook post reach without spending money, then you have to reconsider the quality of content you are sharing.
Facebook post reach depends on the engagement on the posts you share. Engagement here includes LIKES, SHARES, COMMENTS and CLICKS (if there is a link in the post).
So if you want to improve your Facebook post reach without spending money, ensure to only share contents that can provoke your fans/friends to comment, like, share or even interact with by clicking on the links. That way Facebook will consider your posts useful and engaging and will tend to show them more on your fan’s news feeds.
Otherwise, if your fans/friends don’t engage on your contents, Facebook will think your fans are not interested in your posts and will push your posts out into the news feed and your reach will decline and no one will see your posts.
You should encourage your fans to share your posts, like them, leave their comments and even click on your links. But the question remains “how can I do that?”
It is quite simple, if you want to improve your engagement since your reach depends on it, then share only “action-worthy” posts.
What I mean by action-worthy posts are posts that will ensure your fans carry out actions such as Liking, Commenting, Sharing or Clicking on links on the post.
So when next you share posts on Facebook again ensure you have engagement in mind, your reach will improve and your Facebook posts will begin to reach even more people.
2. Post when your fans are online: Another reason why your posts are not getting good reach may be because you are sharing posts when your fans are not online.
No one will see your posts when they are not online because Facebook Edegerank algorithm has a time factor that will push the post away from the news feed over time especially when it is not getting any engagements.
Use your Facebook Page Insight tool to discover when your most fans are online and schedule your posts in that time frame. Facebook insight is indeed a useful resource to understanding your Fans behavior and you can use the information you gather here to improve your Facebook post reach without spending money.
From the image above, you can see that most fans of this page are online around 6pm – 10pm. While there are also good number of fans from say 9am – 5pm, you will note that posting from midnight to say 5am will be wasting of time as there are least number of fans online then.
So you can use the information you get from Facebook page insight to improve Facebook post reach without spending money. How you implement the information you have will affect the outcome of your post reach.
3. Post Frequently: Posting multiple times in the day spreading your posts to cover the times when you have good number of fans online can also improve Facebook post reach without spending money.
Using same data as above, you will most probably get more post reach if you spread your posts from 9am to 10pm everyday. Here is where you need some tricks. Sharing only posts with links to one article on your site or the other will definitely annoy your fans. This is where you need to mix things up a bit. You must spice up your post types to keep your audience engaged.
I recommend you share text status updates without links that can encourage engagements, it could be anything you know your fans will find interesting, engage with them on your statuses, get to know them, solve their problems, encourage them to share their problems and seek solutions.
Share photo posts with writings on them and inspire them to engage on them and most importantly share minimal links on your page to keep the engagements high. From the image above you can see that link posts got the least engagement and reach.
So posting frequently and varying your post types can really improve Facebook post reach without spending money.
4. Embed Facebook Posts in Blog Posts: Another way you can improve Facebook post reach without spending money is by embedding your top-performing Facebook updates in your blog posts if you are a blogger.
Simply take a look at your most recent high-engagement Facebook updates and write a blog post that expands on such topics and embed such updates in the blog posts. Do this from time to time and you will create even more reach for your Facebook posts.
Facebook reach has really become a thing of worry mostly for business owners and content creators like me looking to reach a wider audience on the Social Media.
Complaining about it won’t fix it, while the easier means of reaching a wider audience seems to be advertising on Facebook and boosting posts, you can really reach a good amount of people if you follow the tips i have shared in this article.
What is your take on Facebook post reach and Edgerank? How have you managed to reach a good audience on Facebook?
Share some of the methods you use in ensuring a wider reach on Facebook with me on the comments below. I want to hear what you have to say about Facebook Post Reach.
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nice post
Hi Nwosu,
Thanks for a great post. I agree with you that facebook and Mark Z are not taking any prisoners with this new idea. The reach is poor these days but we have to keep inventing and that you have done here! Thanks
I also want to add that in recent times, I have been studying how the “gurus” share their posts and I noticed one thing. Creativity: Being creative with your status message text, luring people to want to know more. Sometimes they use teaser messages a day or a few hours before they share the main one with the link.
Once again, great post!
Thanks Uju for your awesome contribution and yes creativity is surely a great way of ensuring good post reach on Facebook. Using teasers can make people want to know and this can surely work wonders since Facebook seems to favor text updates without links, so you use it to create awareness so when you finally share with a link, people will dig around for it.
Hey Nwosu,
You brought up some valuable points about optimizing facebook when it comes to your posts and blog! I always wonder how you can make the best of it, and you answered some of my questions.
One of the questions I had was how can I track to see when my niche market is online. Then you answered it by pointing to facebook Page Insight Tool. I do have to admit, I don’t go on my page too often, but this gives me more reasons too and become more involved in it.
Also posting frequently helps as well. I use Buffer and Tweet Old post plugin and connected my blog to the both of them. Its like killing two birds with one stone. As soon as i click on publish, it tweets and post in facebook at the same time!
Thanks for sharing Nwosu! I hope you’re having a great week!
I think you forget to mention about Facebook Groups, I would suggest you to participate in niche Facebook groups and share your stuff there so that you can reach more targeted audience and create more engagement.
Thats indeed a great addition, but beware not to be tagged as spam.
Hello Nwosu !!
It’s a nice post you have here, very brilliant and convincing,
hi Nwosu
You mentioned the points right, good ways to increase the reach of post. I want to add a point here….
when you are posting a article, there is a title and image with description that you can edit too but most bloggers don’t do that because they are not aware of the fact that it it editable.
All that you need to do it, hover your mouse on the content and it will select automatically, select it and you can make it customized.
Never checked facebook reach !