If you’ve run a Facebook business page for a few years, you might have noticed that your likes and comments have started to decrease when you make organic posts. If this has happened to you, you’re not alone.
Over the last few years, Facebook’s organic post reach has reduced more and more from about 16% (back in the hayday) down to about 2% today for pages with more than 500,000 likes and 6.51% for pages with less (Edgerank Checker 2014). In laymans terms, this means that when you make an organic Facebook post it reaches only 2% of your followers.
Yeesh, right?
Why Is This Happening?
A big reason why organic post reach has declined is because the number of Facebook pages has increased. In June 2012 there were 8 million business pages and now there are 42 million (Zephoria) – a massive increase to say the least. With all of these pages posting content constantly, a lot of content tends to get buried, meaning less reach overall.
How To Get Better Reach
1. Add Links
You often hear about photos being an important part of getting your posts seen on Facebook. However, this can be increased even more with the addition of links. According to research from Locowise posts perform best when they have links included inside them. This can boost their post reach up to 18%.
2. Consider Paid Reach
The truth is that it is incredibly difficult to get noticed on Facebook nowadays unless you use paid reach. Sure, there are viral videos that get lots of attention without having to pay, but the reality is that 77% of Facebook’s post reach is paid for.
The good thing is that using paid reach on Facebook is very easy to do and doesn’t have to cost a lot of money. The campaign costs as much as you want to pay and will get you much better results.
3. Check Your Insights
Checking your Facebook Insights can help you see what things are connecting with your audience. Because although links and photos tend to create better results overall, only your personal insights can help you know what works for your audience.
It’s frustrating to see companies trying desperately to get noticed on Facebook using only organic reach and getting no traction. Our best advice is to accept that things have changed when it comes to Facebook, so everyone need to change their approach too if we want to get results.
