Facebook marketing is an art. And Facebook page management is a science!
If you’re not putting yourself in front of your fans or prospects very well, it doesn’t matter how clever your posts are or how well-designed your page is. You simply won’t get spectacular results, or a return.
It’s hard to sell if you’re not seen.
So, what do you do?
How do you make sure that you’re getting your message across, that your page and your posts and your ads enjoy as much exposure as they possibly can?
You have to understand Facebook reach – and understand it well.
Thankfully, we can help. We’ve blogged on reach before – from basic principles to industry developments – and today we’re going to share a few of those posts with you.
Let’s start by defining what reach actually is.
1. What You Need to Know About Facebook Reach
As a social marketer, you live and die by reach. And it’s not hard to understand why.
Your reach is how many unique people see your content.
Whereas impressions tell you how often your content is displayed, that could be ten times to one fan or one time to ten fans. You wouldn’t know which until you consulted your reach data.
And that data, we should point out, can be separated into page-level reach and post-level reach.
Your posts might resonate far and wide, even while your page itself does not. This can happen when you have good, strong content but don’t publish very often. If it’s the other way around – your page has a lot of reach but your individual posts don’t – it’s probably the result of having low-quality content or content that’s not promoted very well.
How paid and organic post reach compare.
And if that wasn’t enough, we can break down reach even further into categories like organic, paid, fan, viral, and so on.
The first two are generally the most important to know.
- Organic reach comes from newsfeed views and Facebook page visits.
- Paid reach comes from all kinds of Facebook ads.
And when it comes to actually publishing?
Read on to find out what metrics to benchmark against your reach, why paid reach is worth it, and more.
2. The Reach Efficiency of Social Media
Now that we know what Facebook reach is, does it actually work? And by that I mean, is it just as efficient as other channels in terms of cost, reach, user quality, and so on?
It’s not. It’s more efficient.
With reach efficiency, social performs the best.
A Neustar study discovered that social media delivered the highest-quality users, outcompeting the industry average by 65% and performing 33% better than the next best channel.
In part, it’s because social media:
- Lets you reach your most likely customers.
- Generally costs less than other channels.
Discover what else the study has to say – including our actionable strategies for growing reach.
3. How Reporting the News Drives Organic Reach
So, how do you grow reach?
The traditional wisdom is that you have to post well, post often, and promote everything. And it’s true. That strategy will absolutely improve your reach.
However, it’s a very general strategy. It can be hard to translate it into actionable terms – the things you do, the posts you write. Having a post template – a specific angle or subject – makes life a lot easier.
And there is definitely one kind of post that performs well across industry lines. And that’s the breaking news one. These posts increase reach reliably, every time.
How a few news outlets compare in terms of reach.
You don’t have to be a news outlet to write a news post, however, and that’s an important thing to understand. It just has to revolve around your industry or what your customers are interested in.
For instance, if you work in Facebook marketing, you can post about Facebook’s ban on likegating.
But whatever your industry happens to be, just follow these steps:
- Identify the news stories that matter to your audience.
- Monitor news outlets for these kinds of stories.
- Establish a posting schedule for publishing them.
Learn more about posting breaking news on Facebook, from best practices to vendor recommendations.
4. Does Publishing Frequency Impact Reach?
We know how often you post matters. Unsurprisingly, the more posts you publish the more opportunities you have to reach people.
But there are still a few unanswered questions.
Like, what if you have a bad few months? You posted regularly before – top-grade content, too – and you promoted it heavily and intelligently. Your reach was impressive. The pride of the industry, even. But then life intervened and you couldn’t keep the pace up.
What if you didn’t publish for over half a year? Could you come back? Would you be penalized when you returned?
Thankfully, Facebook is forgiving, as we found out.
Not only can you return to your old reach levels, but you can also improve them. You don’t even have to resort to paid reach to do it.
How do we know? We tested it.
The second post – a less emotional one – still did well even though the blog had been inactive for half a year!
Read our case study on bringing your Facebook page back from the grave.
5. Facebook Organic Reach by Industry
Digital marketing isn’t exactly known for respecting tradition, and Facebook is no exception. Updates come often and they can be significant – game-changing, even.
Recently, there has been a lot of speculation on Facebook organic reach. Namely, that it’s declining. AgoraPulse set out to investigate.
Is your Facebook reach affected?
By leveraging the Facebook Page Barometer, which offers data on more than 7,000 pages, the team drew some conclusions.
It’s a matter of industry.
Find out what’s happening to Facebook organic reach in your industry.
Now, you should have a good understanding of – and a few strategies for maximizing! – Facebook reach.
Just note that Facebook is a very dynamic network and things change rapidly. The concepts – like organic reach vs. paid reach – will remain the same, but how they perform in the real world is subject to updates and revisions.
So, keep checking back. We’ll be here, covering it all.
