Like many Facebook business users, you have probably been left feeling frustrated by your poorly performing Facebook posts. You may be asking yourself what you did wrong, but for the most part it all comes down to the Facebook algorithm and your organic reach.
Organic reach is the number of users who see the posts you share on social media without
you having to put any budget behind those posts. In other words, organic means unpaid.
Many people don’t understand that not everything you share on your Facebook page is
seen by all your followers.
The current average reach for an organic Facebook post is just 2.2%, but could be as low as 1.1% for some brand pages.
To put this in perspective, if I have a Facebook page with 1500 followers, my posts may only be shown to as few as 33 people.
Organic reach on Facebook has been on the decline since 2013, with 2021 being the lowest year yet.
Understanding the Facebook Algorithm
Facebook prioritise posts from friends, family and groups over organic content from businesses.
When choosing which posts to show a person the platform looks at:
Relationships
Who a user typically interacts with. If a user engages with your content every time
you post, Facebook will realise they like seeing your content and are more likely to show
it to them.
Content type
What type of media is in the post (e.g., video, photo, link, audio), and what type of
media does the user interact with or seem to enjoy most. So, if Sean consistently interacts with videos from different users, groups, and business pages on his Newsfeed, Facebook will be more likely to show him video content. If your business shares video content then you would have a higher chance of appearing on Sean’s Newsfeed.
Popularity
How many likes/engagements the posts get. The more likes, comments or shares that Facebook see a post getting, the more they look at the post as being valuable content that they should show other users.
Users don’t tend to respond well to content that focuses on the hard sell. Because of
this, posts pushing products and offering no value typically get very low engagement
and in turn are shown to less users.
Recency
Newer posts are shown first so post consistently, but make sure you’re still sharing
content of value. We recommend trying to share one post a day on Facebook. Most studies agree that two posts per day should be the maximum you share on the platform.
What can you do?
There are a few things you can do to help improve your organic reach, like posting
consistently, sharing content of value, and encouraging engagement on your posts.
Other than this if you want your content to reach more people, you’re going to have to put some money behind them. There are a lot of benefits to paid posts, the main being that you can reach a much wider audience, drive more conversions, and reach your ideal audience. We’ve got some useful blog posts on online advertising, targeting, and Facebook video ads.
Above all its extremely important that you are realistic with your expectations when it comes to social media marketing. This is especially relevant for the number of likes, follows, shares, and comments that your posts could receive on social media.
