Is organic social media reach a thing of the past?

Organic social media reach – we’ve likely all thought about it at least once. Talk to any business owner starting out on social media, and you’ll probably hear about their internal debate over whether to pay for social media advertising or not – and that’s a fair concern.

In truth, almost all social platforms offer some form of advertising (and those that don’t will soon catch up), but for the sake of this blog post I will be focussing on Facebook advertising, as it’s where brands are allocating the majority of their social marketing budget.

It can often feel like a catch 22 when it comes to Facebook marketing in particular. Often businesses feel that once they start putting money into their posting, Facebook stops organically sharing their posts on newsfeeds, and only promotes those that have been paid for, leaving them with an empty pit to shovel money into.

But on the other hand, without putting any money into posts, many brands find it hard to get their page out there in the first place. Without followers, there’s nowhere organic for your content to go. This is something we can relate to at Hyped – as we’ve only truly just started out, and we need to focus on building our own pages as well.

So really, which do you choose? Is organic content even achievable anymore? Or have the algorithm’s changed to the point where you are forced to pay for your page to rank?

No. Organic social media reach is entirely achievable, and for almost anyone – it just takes a little extra elbow grease.

Maybe you’re just starting out, and have very little marketing budget – or perhaps you are wary of social media, and you aren’t sure you want to invest your eggs in this basket without proof it will pay off yet. There are many reasons why brands and businesses might not want to funnel money into Facebook advertising, but luckily there are other ways to attract attention.

Firstly, you want to start engaging with influencers, and other pages who have audiences in your niche market.

This means, if you’re a newborn baby photographer, you’re going to want to approach local parent education organisations, media (like baby magazines), and possibly local community pages where you can talk about your page. These groups will likely have more followers than you, and even if they don’t, many of them will be people who may not have heard of you, and are highly relevant to your market. This is important, because it’s not just about reaching a lot of people – there’s no point in having 10,000 Facebook followers if none of them are potential clients.

Then you want to start engaging with users and followers.

This applies both to ones who comment on related posts on the influencer pages you engaged with above, as well as those who have engaged with your own posts on your pages. It’s in the name – social media. People are going to be more interested in your business, if they know your business is interested in them – and not just from a sales perspective. Making sure you answer all comments, on your own page, as well as replying to a few on other pages, means more people will see your page as an active brand, where they know they can find engagement. It’s also going to put your page on relevant newsfeeds.

In the same strain as both of the suggestions above – tag everyone relevant to your posts.

Shared a Buzzfeed post? Tag them in your caption. Photographed a family? Tag everyone in the photos. Received an awesome photo of someone using your product? Re-share it on Facebook and make sure you tag them! Tagging people is the single best way to make sure their friends and family see your post as well. Don’t let all of these people pass you by, make sure you TAG THEM!

Running a Facebook competition also has great opportunities to increase organic reach.

This is a tricky one when it comes to not using any money. If you’re just starting out on Facebook, a competition can be a great way to reach new people – but you need to be smart about it. If you outright refuse to put money into it – then make sure you have a good base of people who will enter it first (friends and family), and then at least one other page with a high follower account to share it. Without these things, your competition will go nowhere, but with it, you can see your follower count increase drastically – but make sure the prize is relevant to your brand, or you’ll see followers drop off as soon as the competition closes.

So what can you take from all of this? Organic social media reach is NOT dead, but it’s a tricky field of work. I still recommend most brands to spend a minimum of $50 per month on social media marketing, particularly if their follower count is currently low. This helps them grow at a much faster rate, and enables targeted advertising, to ensure their page – and their dollar – go to the right person. But as I always say – social media should never be about the hard sell, and I’m a strong proponent of a good mix of quality, organically promoted content, and paid promotion of the content that truly matters.

If you’d like a more specific rundown on how to grow your business, we provide FREE social media audits, and we’d love to help you out. It’s no sales pitch – we’ll write you a comprehensive review that you can take away and use on your own business so contact us today!

If it all gets a bit much, some times small business social media management is your best option – lucky for you it’s our specialty!