Nowadays, nearly everybody is on Facebook (even newborns!), which instantly qualifies it as an excellent platform to promote you and your business. 


Over the past few years organic has seen a dip in reach and engagement as Facebook pushes businesses towards paid advertising on Facebook - but don’t worry, it’s not all lost! With an excellent strategy and knowledge of what your audience wants to see on their newsfeed, you can maintain your organic reach & engagement without having to go down the paid route. 


How? Follow these 5 easy steps: 


1. Write/share posts that engage with your audience

If you’re not engaging with your audience on Facebook, what’s the point of posting? A good way to engage with your audience, is to post content with captions that encourage likes, comments and shares. Why’s this? When a user engages with one of your posts, not only does it improve your posts ranking on the Facebook newsfeed, but it will also show up in the newsfeed of any of the engaging users friends and followers. 

2. Mix Up post formats

Another great way to extend your organic reach is to mix up your post formats regularly. If you’re mostly posting images, and seeing that they’re not getting the reach and engagement that they used to - mix it up and try a video or link post instead (keep reading for more on link posts!). Even if you’re getting the same reach and engagement with your image posts as always, throwing new types of formats into your posting schedule keeps your content fresh and engaging for your audience - it’s also a great way to test which format performs the best! Facebook is forever introducing new formats, and many marketers believe that the Facebook algorithm prioritises the newest formats. Whilst we don’t know if this is concrete, it’s still a great idea to test out the more complex formats like Facebook live, stories, and polls to get the conversation started among your audience. 



3. Find your best time to post 

Did you know that the first hour after you post is the most valuable? That’s because within this hour, you’ll receive 50% of your engagement. Posts usually have a lifespan of 22 hours, after that period your post will go stale and won’t be visible in the newsfeed. So it’s good to know when your users are active, right? The way you can do this is head to your company’s business page, click on insights in the top menu bar, and then dive into the ‘Posts’ tab on the left sidebar, and boom! You can see what time of the day your users are most active, and on which day of the week. With this information, you can make sure you can rack up maximum engagement within that first golden hour of posting. 


4. Post High Quality Links

Did you know that Facebook actually analyses the quality of your links, and moves your link posts either higher or lower in your audiences news feed based on that. 

How to avoid this issue? 

Make sure you’re sending your audience to a landing page that is high-speed, has verified content, fewer ads, and appropriate imagery/videos. If you’re landing page has these qualities, then the user will spend more time on it - which also helps your post rank higher in the feed. Finally, engagement is a key indicator of link quality. If a user engages after they’ve clicked on the link, it tells Facebook that they enjoyed the content or found it interesting, and Facebook in turn ranks it higher. 


5. Ask your followers to turn on notifications 

We know that Facebook already prioritises high-quality content, but with so many posts filling up the feed, how do you come out top? On your page, there is a setting that enables your following to be notified of every post you make. A great time to ask your audience to turn on notifications is after a super interesting and engaging video or content piece, which excites your audience into following your page more closely. It’s an engagement method that’s not too frequently used, but when executed well your page will end up with a core group of followers & engagers.