- Preface
- Reach Types
- Techniques
- Conclusion
- Further Reading
- Disclaimer
During early-September 2017 while working at Response Services Incorporated, I was asked to do some research regarding Social Media, and how to expand the reach of our official Facebook fan page. I will admit that I was a little hesitant at first. This is because in my personal opinion, the social media and advertising industries can be quite shady. Even though I could not compare Response to an organization such as Buzzfeed, it was still something that I was concerned about in principle. After taking some time to think about it, I realized that optimizing the reach of a social media page is not that different from optimizing a web page for search engine rankings. I had no moral hesitation in researching Search Engine Optimization previously, so I was a little more comfortable with undertaking this task.
Through a quick Google search, I was able to shortlist several then-recent articles which explain how one may increase the overall reach of their Facebook page. The catch is that as generalized as the sources were, they were still targeted towards large businesses and/or clickbait distributors. Seeing as Response was neither of those things, it was apparent to me that not all of the information would apply to us. As a regional business, Response's Facebook page was quite small and simple to maintain in comparison to a worldwide brand such as McDonalds. This document was the result of summarizing and consolidating the information found across the different articles. This includes the common practices recommended by the writers in order to improve the reach of a Facebook page.
Before the different techniques can be explained, we must first make the distinction between different forms of reach. You might think that the exact type of reach does not matter as long as it yields results, but some articles do make these distinctions. In order to better expalin the theory behind it, this document will do the same.
Facebook reach is the number of unique people who see your content on the social network. It’s a measurement of your brand’s effective audience. Not all of your fans will see every single post you publish. And not everyone who sees your updates will be fans of your Page
- Jennifer Beese (Sprout Social)
As for the different types of reach, the aforementioned article uses the following categories:
- Organic represents the number of people who saw the content on the news feed naturally without it being shared by anybody.
- Paid represents the number of people who saw the content as the result of a paid advertisement.
- Viral represents the number of people who saw the content due to it being liked, shared, etc.
The rest of this report is going to summarize commonly used for expanding Facebook reach. The chosen techniques are common between most of the articles found. Since this is a summary, the exact source will not be referenced for each piece of information unless it is a direct quotation. Instead, the sources will be listed at the end for further reading.
Simply put, nobody likes a boring brand. If an online presence can be likened to a stage performance, it is best to make it as entertaining as possible. It may be difficult to balance this against a professional image but things do not always have to be serious. There are many ways to go about this but the idea is to incorporate fun, quirky, and light-hearted content.
In this use case, you could post a picture of one of our day programs for disability clients, such as our video game group. It could even be as simple as showing a couple of friends going about their day. Both of these ideas aim to depict the fun side of things and may entice interest in our services.
When people hear the word "hashtag", they often think of Twitter. The use of hashtags has since expanded to other social media platforms. Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr are examples of platforms that have functional support for hashtags. As a result, it may be necessary to use them in order to increase reach.
A hashtag is a label for content. It helps others who are interested in a certain topic, quickly find content on that same topic. [...] Anyone sharing content on a relevant topic can add the hashtag label to their message. Others searching for that topic, can search for that label to find other messages on that same social media platform.
- Anita Campbell (Small Business Trends)
To add a hashtag to your post, type the # symbol before adding the relevant keyword - #example
Imagine that you run a Facebook page and you decide to post this Cat picture. If you chose to use hashtags, you might use ones such as #cat, #adorable, or #meow. The tags should relate to the post content.
The tricky part about using hashtags is moderation. Keep in mind that hashtags in social media were popularized by Twitter, so it is arguable that other platforms have 'copied' Twitter's hashtag mechanic. Hashtags can be used to categorize posts and drive traffic but using any more than a few hashtags on a post can be seen as obnoxious. This creates the risk that users will ignore the content, or perhaps unlike the page entirely.
If you do feel the need to use hashtags, only use up to three per post...
...but this is too much, even if it is meant to be a parody.
The Call-to-Action is a marketing tactic which directly addresses the viewer as they read the content. This is seen as a great way to engage that viewer with your post and entice them to share it among their friends. A CTA in a Facebook post might be something such as:
- Like this post if you love Pizza.
- Do you enjoy our quality of service? Why not share it with your friends :)
- Do you prefer Red or Blue? Tell us in the comments section below.
In comparison to hashtags, the CTA is subjective. There are no right or wrong ways to write this sort of content. It is not a tangible 'feature' that can 'belong' to any particular platform. However, also like hashtags, they should be used in moderation. The Social Media Examiner points out that not every single piece of content needs to have a CTA. Rather, you should include a mix of different content with CTAs only being one part of the rotation. An occasional CTA post can promote engagement and interactivity among a fanbase. However, doing them too often can be seen as bad practice similar to using too many hashtags. If you do feel the need to include a CTA, it should be kept simple and not too obtrusive.
CTAs can be used in order to ask questions to your followers.
Asking questions to your followers activates them, leading to greater reach for your Page. At the same time, it gives you the answers to questions that may be crucial for your company’s sales and marketing.
- Robert Rydefalk (Meltwater)
When you ask the users a question, the goal is to start a discussion. Furthermore, participating in this discussion yourself reassures your followers that they are heard. You do not have to answer every single question or reply to every single comment, but the important part is that interaction between creators and their viewers. The idea is to show them that as an organization, you are active, approachable and sensitive to their concerns. In return, users will be more likely to remain loyal fans and recommend it to their friends. Taking every opportunity to engage your audience is part of what keeps them coming back for more.
It may also help to acknowledge shared posts. In other words, if a particular fan or business shares one of your posts, you should ‘like’ it so that they know you appreciate their effort.
A picture is worth a thousand words. It is often much quicker to find a decent image and upload it to Facebook, rather than type out a wall of text. While images will not always replace text information, it is hard to deny that they can be more likely to capture the user's attention.
We are very visual creatures. A large percentage of the human brain dedicates itself to visual processing. Our love of images lies with our cognition and ability to pay attention. Images are able to grab our attention easily, we are immediately drawn to them.
-James Balm (BioMed Central)
To reiterate, this is not a suggestion that images replace text. You are able to include a short text description with an image post. Instead of relying solely on a long passage of text, you may upload a relevant image with a short description to establish context. It is a lot easier and quicker for the provider while more exciting and engaging for the user. Using a short description alongside the image is also a fair compromise for users who actively prefer text as opposed to images.
This sales promotion post from JB Hi-Fi includes both an image and a short text description.
When expanding the reach of a Facebook page, a good starting point would be posting content optimized to generate attention and reactions. This does not mean inflating numbers in an artificial way. This refers to organic optimization. As people skim down their news feed, your content has to capture the user’s attention so that they stop and read. The promise of the content and what is being delivered should inspire and motivate people to react to, engage and share it.
You should never publish content just for the sake of updating your Timeline — this applies to any social network, not only Facebook. Instead you should focus on creating content that fulfils your business objectives. The updates you post need to add value in some way, whether they’re educational, entertaining or conversational.
-Praneeta (Digible)
The Facebook news feed is rarely an exhaustive list of the recent content shared by those you are connected to. Rather, the posts that you will see upon refreshing the homepage are prioritized in such a way to maximize your potential engagement. Trying to describe this system in detail would be a massive project in itself and even then, there is no way to list all of the possible factors.
Some of the most important factors include:
- When was the post published?
- The number of likes, shares, comments, etc
- Are other people currently engaging with the post?
- How often has the user interacted with the page?
- How often has the user interacted with this type of post (text, image, etc) compared to others?
To describe the end result of this system:
The Facebook news feed algorithms reward active advertisers and engaging content. The more reactions, comments, and shares your posts get, the better their reach. This goes for both organic and paid (your advertising dollars will go further).
-Mari Smith (Social Media Examiner)
In summary, the more reactions a post has, the more likely it will receive a high priority when loading one’s news feed. The best way to ensure that, of course, is to post content that captivates attention and entices a reaction.
When optimizing content, it is worth fine-tuning the length, timing, and frequency of posts. This may be an ongoing process of trial and error but the effort can be important in maximizing the long-term organic reach of a page. The Facebook Insights tool may be beneficial in this process, which will be discussed later on.
As for post length, not everybody prefers long or short posts. Some might prefer short while others prefer long. Regardless if the content is text, images, or videos, consider the interaction trends to determine the post length that the audience generally prefers.
As for when to post, try to concentrate around less busy times when people are more likely to be on Facebook. Of course, this is different per person. Not everybody will be active at the same time. However, once you find the time slot in which the audience is most receptive, post during that region so that people are more likely to see and react to content.
As for post frequency, do not post too often. Otherwise, people will start ignoring or unliking. For a regional business such as Response, posting once or twice a day on average can be considered reasonable.
If you are going to post videos, do so directly via Facebook where possible. It may be tempting to upload the video to YouTube and share the link but according to the articles I have read, videos uploaded directly to Facebook tend to have 10x more reach in comparison to those hosted on YouTube. It is understandable that you might be concerned about data limitations and internet speeds. Many people prefer to use YouTube as a central upload and share the link to multiple places throughout the internet. If you are connected to a network that will allow you to do so, upload the videos to Facebook directly, as the news feed algorithm will give higher priority. The algorithm takes into account the video length as well as the reactions that it generates. Therefore, you can use video to gain more visibility and reach.
Sometimes when you need to communicate something important to a fanbase, it needs to be posted more than once. Try to identify this important content and after the initial post has expired, make another, similar post for those who may not have seen the first one.
If you choose to do this, try to post it at a different time in comparison to the original post. For example, you make a promotional post one day at 12pm. People might see it when they check their Facebook but consider that people have school, work, and other commitments. Not everybody checks in at the exact same time. Instead, you might repost the content at 7pm the following evening for example. There may be a different crowd of people who check Facebook in the evenings and not on their lunch break.
Something else to keep in mind is that it is a bad idea to directly repost the content as it appeared originally. Instead, you should try to reiterate the content and explain the same information in a different way.
For example, consider that Bill Gates made a post to his Facebook page on the 21st of August 2017. While that post clearly had a good run of its own, he made a follow-up post the next day with similar content for those who may not have seen the first.
Also notice how that the original post is an image while the follow-up post is a video.
When you are referring to another brand in your Facebook content, it is recommended that you ‘tag’ or 'mention' the brand in question if they have a page of their own. This other brand could refer to another business, organization, cause, famous person, or anything else. Depending on their settings, the post may appear on that brand's page. This will likely draw attention from the fan bases of both brands. Hence, the reach potential for a post will be increased.
To tag something in a post, use the @ symbol before typing the name. A list of matching names will be displayed as you type. You can select the name from the match list in order to tag them.
On the final post, the tagged name will look and function similar to a hyperlink. When somebody clicks on the tagged name, they will be taken to the corresponding page.
To give a simple description, if you embed or link a post in a website outside of Facebook, you will help send and direct people to the original source of the content. Therefore, you can improve your reach by accounting for those who might not have seen the content, or even use Facebook at all. Furthermore, there are plug-ins and widgets that enable you to embed Facebook posts, videos, or even entire pages onto a website so that users may view the Facebook content externally. You can also embed a simple ‘like button’ widget along with something that links to the page itself. However, the implementation of these widgets will not be discussed here.
This is exactly what you would expect it to be. You can pay for Facebook to advertise your content and boost the potential reach. As a result, Facebook’s algorithms will amplify both your organic and paid content.
Here’s where you start to pay to boost the reach of your content to improve your Facebook marketing ROI considerably. Rather than promote everything, apply some strategic selection to amplify the established organic reach of specific posts with Facebook ads.
For some posts, your objective may be to raise awareness and increase engagement and video views, for example. But for other posts, you’ll want to promote those with a link so you can drive traffic to your website. [...] After you select your posts, decide how you want to allocate your budget. For the best results, spread out your ad spend and avoid blowing your entire budget on a single post with one boost or one ad.
-Mari Smith (Social Media Examiner)
Relating back to the different forms of reach, posts can either gain reactions organically or with the assistance of paid advertising. Rather than simply relying on one or the other, it is recommended that you do not pay for advertising as soon as a post is made. Instead, let the post circulate naturally for some time before you boost it with an advertisement. How long that delay should be is subjective. For example, a post made by a global business with several million likes will have their posts circulated in a matter of minutes, or even seconds. However, for a smaller, more local business, this could take up to 24 hours.
Despite Facebook’s popularity as a marketing tool, not everything you post has to be promotional or sales-related. Even though a business can have a Facebook page, the articles that I have read point to the concept of the '80/20 rule'. In other words, only 20% of posts should be directly promotional while the other 80% should be more informal. For example, you could make a post regarding the general experience at Response on most days. Then you might make a blatant promotion perhaps once or twice a week.
Instead of relying on paid advertising as the first resort, posts can be targeted to specific audiences. The Facebook news feed algorithm will take these targets into account so that the particular post will reach the right people organically. A post can be targeted towards demographics such as gender, age, location, and specific interests. You can also set an expiry date for your post so it will stop showing on news feeds by that date. With that being said, this feature only affects the likelihood of a post being displayed on a given person’s news feed. Of course, when somebody views a fan page directly, they can see all of their posts, even if they passed their 'expiry date'. It is also important to note that when using this feature, your post must target at least 20 people.
First, make sure that 'Audience Optimization for Posts' is enabled in your page settings.
To use the post targeting feature, follow the screenshots below.
When using post targeting for the first time, you may want to test it out by running a couple of targeted posts using different criteria. This is so you can gauge the audience reaction per post and see if it makes a difference.
As posts can be targeted towards specific audiences either through organic reach or paid advertising, Facebook offers an 'Audience Insights' feature. This is where page managers can view statistics and demographics about their audience as a whole.
The insights tool divides statistics into three categories:
- Facebook in general. Everyone who sees your content regardless of their reaction.
- People who are directly connected to the page. Those who have ‘liked’ it.
- Saved custom audiences for different demographics, interests, usage habits and other variables.
In order to access the 'Audience Insights' tool, you must open the 'Facebook Ad Manager'. It is found within the drop-down menu under the "Analyse and Report" section.
You will then see a pop-up allowing you to choose the desired audience. Alternatively, you can close it and view the entire dashboard.
The 'Demographics' tab allows you to narrow down your target audience by adjusting different filters. These filters include location, age, gender, interests, and liked pages. As you modify these filters, the graphs will automatically update to display the new results. Different tabs will show different graphs and data depending on the chosen filters.
For example, you can filter to display information about people who are interested in 'Coffeehouses'
The ‘Page Likes’ tab shows top categories related to the audiences and in turn, the fan pages related to that audience behaviour. This tab shows audience data that can help indicate which pages have more engagement in comparison to others.
Notice that this table shows different data like audience and affinity, which is used to identify which fanpages have more engagement than others. This information is used by advertisers to know which competitors have better marketing strategies and engagement with their audiences. While big fanpages show low affinity rates because of the huge amount of fans, which doesn’t mean low engagement, you can actually see difference in the affinity rate between smaller fanpages.
-Maryam Sicard (Stream SEO)
The 'Location' tab shows information regarding the most common cities, countries, and languages related to the current filtered audience.
The 'Activity' tab shows the frequency of activities among audience members. These activities include liking pages, liking posts, making comments, sharing content, and clicking advertisements. It will also show how the audience accesses Facebook per device and which device is the most common.
While ‘Audience Insights’ can be used to help gain demographic data regarding your page audience, the ‘Page Insights’ tool is used to obtain engagement statistics about the fan page itself. Rather than focusing on the audience. It focuses on providing data that indicates how the page is performing. As the 'Audience Insights' tool was covered previously, not much new information needs to be displayed here. While it is used a little differently for different purposes, the general idea remains the same.
You can access the ‘Page Insights’ tool by accessing your page while logged in as an administrator. Afterwards, click ‘Insights’ at the top of the page.
As you can see on the left sidebar, the insights are divided into many different sections. Each of them go into detail about a specific area. This report will only elaborate on the most important sections.
The 'Overview' section dashboard displays general information about the page's performance within a given time-frame.
The 'Likes' section displays statistics related to page likes. These include the number of likes or unlikes for any given day, whether the likes were organic or paid, and how many per individual source.
The 'Reach' section shows data regarding the overall engagement of fans. This includes:
- Post reach
- The number of people that the page content has reached.
- Broken down by organic circulation or paid advertisement.
- Positive engagement
- Likes, comments, shares, etc.
- Negative engagement
- Hides, spam reports, unlikes, etc.
- Total reach
- The total number of people who have seen any of the page's posts regardless of how they have been circulated.
The 'Page Views' section show data regarding the number of times the page has been viewed. It will also display the number of times people were directed to the page via an outside source such as the organization's website.
The 'Posts' section shows information regarding the engagement across different posts. This includes:
- The most frequent days and times that fans are active.
- The engagement and reach across different post types.
- Most popular posts across the entire page.
- Reach and engagement for individual posts.
The 'Video' section displays information related to video posts. This includes:
- Overall views: The number of times videos posted on the page were viewed for at least three seconds.
- 10-Second Views: Number of times videos posted on the page were viewed for at least 10 seconds.
- Top videos: Most viewed videos based on the number of 3+ second views.
Since this is similar to the 'Posts' section, a screenshot has not been included.
The 'People' section displays information about the number of people who have interacted with the page in some way. This includes:
- Total number of likes
- Total number of people reached.
- Total number of people who have actively engaged.
For example, this screenshot indicates that out of all of the depicted page's fans, 57% of them are women, 41% are men, and the remaining 2% presumably have a different gender identity. The column graph shows that the most popular gender-age demographic is women aged 45 to 54.
This report is a compilation of several different sources regarding Facebook fan pages and advice on how they can be managed. It also explains how to promote the page for potential new fans, and to promote engagement among existing fans. It should be noted that this is not qualified information on running Facebook pages, or any website for that matter. Hence, it should only be used as a starting point. Links have been included to the source material and other used assets for further reading.
Here is a list of all of the sources used when writing this document. They are separated by whether they were used originally (5-6 September 2017), or when revising for public release (1-3 February 2021).
-
How to Boost Facebook Reach
-Robert Rydefalk (Meltwater) -
How to Maximize Your Facebook Reach
-Mari Smith (Social Media Examiner) -
20 Secrets to Boost Your Facebook Organic Reach
-Neil Patel -
How to Easily Increase Your Facebook Reach
-Jennifer Beese (Sprout Social) -
How to Use Facebook Audience Insights to Increase ROI
-Maryam Sicard (Stream SEO) -
What Can I Learn From Facebook Page Insights?
-Tara Johnson (Tinuiti) -
A Beginner’s Guide to Facebook Analytics and Insights
-Dara Fontein (Hootsuite) -
What is a Hashtag? And What Do You Do With Hashtags? -Anita Campbell (Small Business Trends)
-
Too Many Hashtags Can Be a Bad Practice
-Roy McClean (Custom Fit Online) -
New To Hashtags? 7 Things You Should Know
-Tom Durby (hashtags.org) -
The Power of Pictures
-James Balm (BioMed Central) -
Facebook Ads Guide - Image
-Facebook -
Facebook goes Twitter
-Christian Zibreg (Geek.com) -
6 Tips for Increasing Facebook Organic Reach in an Age of Decline
-Caitlin Burgess (Top Rank Marketing) -
Oficial Facebook fan page - Camille Jones interview (post 1, post 2)
-Bill Gates -
Facebook IQ - Audience Insights
-Facebook -
Facebook Audience Insights And Why You Need To Use It
-Megan Del Borrello (Gloss Marketing) -
Editing in Ads Manager
-Facebook -
Insights FAQ
-Facebook
-
How to improve your Facebook reach in 2020
-Phil Grossman (Sprout Social) -
How to Tag People on Facebook
-wikiHow Staff (wikiHow) -
How to Use Facebook Preferred Audience Targeting For Organic Posts
-Andrew Kunesh (Fanbooster) -
How To Reach New Audiences with Facebook Audience Insights
-Kasia Slonawska (NapoleonCat) -
Cat Stock Photo
-Nennieinszweidrei (Pixabay) -
5 Ways to use Facebook Audience Insights
-Reggie Paquette (Revealbot) -
How to Use Facebook Audience Insights for Precise Ad Targeting
-Todd Clarke (Hootsuite) -
Page Insights Dashboard Screencap
-Musuems & Galleries of NSW -
The Beginner’s Guide to Facebook Analytics
-Christina Newberry (Hootsuite) -
Official Facebook fan page - New Movies & TV Shows sale
-JB Hi-Fi
This repository is based on an internal document written as part of the IT team at Response Services Incorporated. It was originally written on 5-6 September 2017. While this information appears to still be relevant as of 2021, there is no guarantee that it is accurate or up-to-date.
The document was converted to markdown on 1-3 Feburary 2021. Any organization-specific information was removed, rewritten to fit with the general topic, or elaborated upon. The revised document was then shared publicly to GitHub on 3 February 2021. The document was declared to be final on 17 May 2021.
The sources used - both for the original document, and when revising for public release - have been linked in the Further Reading section with the name of the author. All links have been verified as of 3 Feburary 2021. The information used for this document is the property of its respective legal owners.
The screencaps of Bill Gates' Facebook fan page are original work and were made on 6 September 2017
The screencap of the JB Hi-Fi sales promotion post on their Facebook fan page is original work and was made on 2 February 2021.
The Cat image file was retrieved from Pixabay on 1 February 2021, which is freely licensed for both personal and commercial use. A different Cat image was used when writing the original document. However, it was from a commercial source so it has been replaced it with a 'Creative Commons' image.
All other images originate from the source articles linked in 'Further Reading'
Minor edits were performed on different images using GIMP for file size reduction, cropping, and joining similar images together.
This document as a whole is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
