Learn a few essential tips for optimizing your Facebook Boosted Posts vs Organic Reach.
SPOILER ALERT … You need BOTH! Quality content posted to a Quality Audience plus Boosted posts to reach those that are not seeing your posts in their Newsfeed (read on to find out WHY?).
Study your Audience insights and learn to know your Ideal Customer extremely well (just like you would get to know any other friend, online and offline!); what they Like and engage with is a good indication of what will work to get their attention!
One of my active Facebook Followers recently asked about Facebook Boosted Posts vs. Organic Reach.
With my motto of “Ask and you will Receive” I have kinda written up a transcript of what I talked about during this Facebook Live video.
If you prefer to listen – go ahead or read and implement the tips below.
Boosted Posts vs Organic Reach
Let’s start off by saying Boosted Posts are definitely essential and there are two main reasons:
- It is how you have to roll because Facebook is a business and needs to turn profits to survive and grow. Therefore, to score with Facebook as a valuable marketing tool, you must play by the rules and the most important of those is that you must PAY TO PLAY! If you’re serious about using Facebook as a business tool, then you must set a marketing budget and have marketing objectives against which you monitor and measure your results to gauge your Return on Investment.
- Organic Reach is declining and it is not about Facebook being difficult and forcing businesses to invest. It is because of the vast growth and popularity of the platform.
There are over 2 billion Facebook Users.
Take moment to think about all these Users following their friends, family, favourite Brands, joining Groups, and, the +40 million small businesses posting their own content hoping for eyes on it…
How do you think Facebook can achieve its key objective of delivering the best possible experience to its Users?
Facebook’s Algorithm and Boosted Posts vs. Organic Reach
The first thing to get right in your mind is that Facebook is not out to sabotage YOU! Your BIG opportunity is to embrace every change the Social Media giant introduces. By working it out, testing how to make it work for your business will most definitely get you ahead of the pack. While others are complainer can be making money!
The Facebook Algorithm, some still call it Edgerank, is a ‘fancy-shmancy’ mathematical equation designed to improve User experience and obviously continue to grow as the undisputed No.1 social media platform.
I can’t add 1 and 1 so I’m not going to explain the techie part of it to you, but I am going to try and make it simple so you understand what it is about.
Here goes and if you get this, your content generation will become that much more effective.
There are three components:
- Affinity
- Weight
- Time Decay
Affinity
Affinity is described as “a similarity of characteristics suggesting a relationship“.
The Facebook Algorithm asks “How big a fan are they?’
The more they like the more they see.
‘What’ and ‘how often’ an individual sees your content is based on what TYPE of content and how OFTEN they previously engaged.
Weight
How do they engage? Certain ACTIONS are more VALUABLE than others.
Starting with
- A read more Click on a Link
- Like or Thumbs Up, Love (the most popular of all these options) and the rest of these Reaction options available to them.
Commenting and sharing are the two best possible forms of engagement and really powerful for different reasons
- Comment. This is when people talk directly to you and marketers know that when you talk to people online the best way to get their attention is to use their language back to them. If you’ve got a user who loves using emoji’s then you know that is something that’s going to get their attention.
Study your Comments to try and get inside the head of those users and understand how they speak. You’re not one of those people who does not return a smile or a greeting so never ever leave a Comment unanswered, even if it is just your own Thumbs Up.
- Share
This is fantastic for your Reach because it is when people are happy and pleased to share what they have seen. This goes for their own Following who in turn may share with theirs and that’s when things go viral!
The secret is to create shareable content!
Time Decay or Recency
How long ago?
This looks at how recently you posted and as a post becomes older it loses value. Do you realize that the life span of a Facebook post is two to three hours?
You know from your own online behaviour that when you scroll through your own news-feed, searching for thumb-stopping content, how far do you scroll back?
Chances are you don’t go much further back there a day if that! Why should your audience be any different?
HOW TO CRACK THE ALGORITHM CODE
(with Boosted Posts vs Organic Reach Tips)
QUALITY
The bottom line is that Quality Content is critical! The only way to crack this code is to apply Best Practices, test and trial until you can establish patterns to what works well for you and what bombs out.
VARIETY
Vary the type of content by using all the options available to you. You can try:
- Plain TEXT persons; BTW why do you think Facebook creates things like optional background colours for status updates or the introduction of GIFs? Whilst I find them irritating most of the time, the question is … Do you think such a successful big business would be developing these updates if they didn’t think that it was going to enhance user experience? Test them!
- Limit characters to display posts in extra-large FONT SIZE.
- You own unique IMAGES with your logo for brand reinforcement; and add your ideal customer in to those images for a real win so viewers can easily put themselves in those shoes, using your product. If you are targeting Empty Nesters you wouldn’t use images of millennials or for example, if you’re selling baby products you’d be talking to parents with babies and not use teenagers in your pics.
- VIDEO is King and Facebook Live rules the social-media-sphere! Video is the top shared content. Facebook knows that, hence the algorithm ranks video way above any other content you can put on social media. A PRO TIP for you: Facebook wants you to upload unique video directly to the platform and not via their competitors e.g. YouTube.
- Sharing third party content that is relevant to your audience can really ADD VALUE to them. Remember when you share a link to somebody else’s material you are actually helping THEIR Reach. You must be sure what outcome you want from your shared links. Obviously No. 1 win is sharing links to your own website or blog.
PURPOSE POSTS FOR ORGANIC REACH
In order to give your posts the best chance of getting high engagement, I encourage my coaching clients to focus on the three E’s:
- Enrich
- Entertain
- Educate
If you do one of those three you’re very likely to be putting quality and valuable content out there and these are more likely to be , likes, comment on and best of all, shared.
You are more likely to get Comments by starting conversations. Try asking question like you would in any other ‘getting to know you’ chat.
HIGHER FREQUENCY
Don’t miss the Train by not being there when it passes through!
If you are serious about marketing your business with Facebook and you are not posting at least once every day on you’re likely to be at the station at the wrong time to catch your train!
In fact, if you are targeting people and businesses, at work and during leisure time, then perhaps you should post more than once a day. 50% of 18-24 year-olds go on Facebook when they wake up. If this is your audience your posts need to be current to make it into their news feed.
Work related posts are more like to be viewed during tea breaks or lunch time whereas family posts are more like to work well after dinner. Maybe rush-hour posts are a great time to reach a captive audience? Facebook gives you Insights to tell you when your audience is on Facebook. Why would you ignore this posting time?
PRO TIP For a higher Reach test early morning, mid-morning, lunch afternoon, evening rush hour and after dinner … please let me know how that works out for you via email or in the comments below.
“Boosted Posts vs Organic Reach” TIPS
In a nutshell, the sheer volume of noise out there can cause your ideal customer to miss out on your tips, communication, offers and news. In order to get your message in front of them you need a Boosted Post strategy.
Here’s how you can improve your RETURN ON INVESTMENT
- Boost your Post from the Ads Manager and not from the button in your Timeline post/update status box.
The options are many when you set up the Ad in your Ads Manager tool. The audience targeting, setting your budget, and exercising your bidding options give you enormous power and this is what makes Facebook Ads such an incredibly effective marketing tool. - Define your ideal customer by specifying gender, age group, location, interests and, the deal breaker, psycho-drivers i.e. what makes them tick? These are the criteria you target and what will attract your ideal customer to your page. It honestly is Quality over Quantity game when it comes to your Followers. There there is no point having people on your page that are not likely to convert into customers! Here is my FREE download template to help you describe your ideal customer so you can target better!
- Boost a post that has already performed well! Why? Think back to the Algorithm. If a post has performed organically (i.e. without paying) and has seen engagement, then it figures that the Algorithm will give it more legs and help it Reach further.
Has this been helpful? Please let me have some feedback and share more tips to help us all market better with Facebook.
Suze Bouwer, owner and creator of RedMatchstick.com is a marketing coach who supports small businesses in Southern Africa by showing (not telling!) owners and managers how to get better, easier and quicker results from digital marketing. Making sense of this often confusing and constantly changing space, Suze shows how to work smarter using tried and tested systems and strategies that support the business, save time and money whilst avoiding costly mistakes, frustration and muddling along alone.
