Broaden your reach without spending a dime

Lately there has been a backlash from people saying that Facebook is forcing people to pay to have their page updates reach their Facebook fans.

While it’s true that many Facebook pages have seen a drop in reach, it’s not due to some conspiracy to force page administrators to buy ads. And it’s definitely not happening to all pages.

Below is a graph from Jon Loomer’s insightful article that actually shows an increase in activity for more than 1,000 Facebook pages:

The truth is that the drop in reach for many pages is a caused by an increase of more relevant posts in their fans’ news feeds.

EdgeRank isn’t unfair, it’s just impartial

Facebook has always used an algorithm to determine what content Facebook users will most likely prefer in their increasingly noisy news feeds.

The pages that have recently seen a huge drop in reach obviously didn’t make the cut. Especially if they were too spammy.

Marketers who are whining about all this need to put down the tissues and realize that promoted posts are simply one option among many to amplify reach.

Here are 13 more ways you can reach your supporters.

Analyze your top 10 content items

1Go into your Facebook Page Insights and rank your content by virality. This is the fastest way to see what’s resonating with Facebook users.

Seek out patterns. Are they mostly photos? If so, what subject do they have in common? What about conditional sharing? What can you learn from the comments in these updates? You get the idea.

Post awesome content

2When you understand what’s been working on your page, you’ll do it more! But how can you go beyond what has worked?

Ask yourself:

• What would it look like if your posts were unbelievably remarkable?
• What would get people talking?

The bottom line is that content is king on Facebook. Take full responsibility for yours!

Optimize targeting

3Administrators of Facebook pages with more than 100 fans can target updates based on gender, relationship status, educational status, age, location and language.

This means that updates that pertain to fans in a specific location, or to a certain age group, won’t be seen by fans outside of that segment. And on the flip side, a higher percent of those reached by these targeted updates will like, comment on, and share them.

Don’t cross-post

4I’ve written about why cross-posting is a bad idea before, so you can read more about that here.

Briefly, the intent of cross-posting is to save time and effort, which is not what’s needed to create a vibrant community.

Post at the best time

5There’s lots of research that suggests that nighttime is the best time to post, particularly around 8 pm.

This makes sense when you think about it. Most people work during the day, come home and have dinner, and then relax, watch TV, and check their news feed.

Post on weekends

6Also supported by research is the fact that weekends are awesome times to post. People generally have more free time on their hands to see what’s up with their Facebook friends. Plus, because very few brands post on the weekends, there’s less competition in the news feed!

Create interest ists

7Interests are user-curated topical lists made up of people or pages. For example, Mari Smith created a list called Facebook Experts & Resources that includes 76 people and pages that Mari has hand-picked.

This means more Facebook fans, more engagement with your content, and more viral reach for your posts!

Use your blog

8If you have a blog, you have a huge opportunity to increase visibility for your Facebook page simply by linking to relevant page updates within blog posts. Making a regular habit of quoting Facebook fans in your blog posts not only creates more awareness for your Facebook page, it also shows your blog readers how much you care about your supporters!

Use events

9If you’re like most nonprofits, events are central to how you do business. Use Facebook before, during, and after each event to build your Facebook fan base, and increase attendance.

Use webinars

10If webinars are a central part of your communications plan, think about using your Facebook page as a post-webinar discussion board! This leverages the concentrated attention you have during your webinars to boost your Facebook Page fan base and reach. This approach is the core strategy for CharityHowTo and Social Media Examiner.

Use email marketing

11Most nonprofits have have an email list that’s about 10 times as big as their Facebook page fan base. Amplify reach for your page by linking to one of your top updates in the course of your normal email communications. Because the content has already been vetted by your fans, your email subscribers will naturally like, comment on, and share it as well with their Facebook friends.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg on what you can do with email marketing.

Use Pinterest

12If your fan base is made up predominately of women, you need to be using Pinterest.

You can create more reach for your Facebook Page photos by reposting them on Pinterest and linking back to the page update. The reach report within Facebook Insights will show you how well this is working.

Tell fans to get notifications

13You already know that when Facebook users like your page, they still might not get your updates in their news feed. One way to help them remedy this is to tell them how to get notifications like I did with this page update.

Learn more and share your thoughts

If you want more ideas, check out the free 30-minute webinar on my Facebook Page.

Now it’s your turn.

What’s an awesomely creative idea you’ve discovered to create more visibility for your Facebook page updates? Share your ideas for everyone in the comments section below.

The post 13 ways to boost your Facebook Page reach appeared first on Socialbrite.

How a few simple changes can make your Facebook Page more visible & engaging to fans

Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, community managers, marketing professionals, NGOs, businesses, brands.

What is your nonprofit doing to engage with your Facebook fans? I put that question to attendees during a talk I gave recently at a gathering of New York nonprofit organizations — and heard about some great practices:

• Planned Parenthood was able to move its Facebook fans to successfully defend the organization against legislative attacks.

• MASA Israel found that including a media image (photo or video) with every wall post update increased wall post engagement. MASA Israel also developed a successful Facebook application that streamlines the program enrollment decision-making process.

• The Partnership at Drugfree.org held a successful Facebook wall chat, most recently with the actress Melissa Gilbert.

The importance of the newsfeed

At the event, convened by my colleagues Michelle Perrault and Seth Giammanco at Minds On Design Lab, I talked about how to ramp up your Facebook engagement. The presentation covered understanding Facebook post engagement, matching goals to engagement, practices and ideas for designing Facebook Page, and how to measure engagement and ROE (return on engagement).

Most fans never visit a Page but instead rely on the Page’s content to show up in their newsfeeds. A recent ComScore study reports that “Facebook users are 40-150 times more likely to consume branded content in the newsfeed than to visit the Fan Page itself.” However, the problem is that not all content will show up in the Top News section of the newsfeed, which is the default newsfeed setting.

Facebook uses an algorithm called EdgeRank that dictates which content will be featured prominently in an individual’s newsfeed. (See J.D. Lasica’s explanation of how EdgeRank works.) EdgeRank takes into account three factors: how recent was the content published (on a site, on a Facebook Page), how much interaction did the piece of content create and how regularly the individual interacts with that organization or brand. Thus, if an organization publishes a video to its Page, and no one Likes or comments on it, the video may never show up in the Top News newsfeed of someone’s home page. However, if an individual often Likes, shares or comments on that organization’s content, there is a higher likelihood that the video will show up as part of the Top News.

Setting goals is important

A recent Idealware study on the use of Facebook reveals that nonprofit organizations that set Facebook goals felt that goal-setting correlated with success on Facebook. In particular, organizations that had the most success with their Facebook page set goals of driving constituents to action and attracting particular kinds of constituents. A recent Hubspot report of Facebook brand pages reveals that businesses with 501-1,000 Facebook fans saw 3.5 times the amount of website traffic than Pages with fewer than 25 fans.

Designing Facebook Engagement

Creating Facebook Page engagement is challenging, which is why it is so important to help your fans engage through good Page design. There are four elements to good Facebook Page design:

• creating a welcoming portal with a custom welcome Page

• identifying what the main conversation within the Page will be about

• offering unique content to your Fans (found only on Facebook), and

• creating a content calendar for your Facebook Page.

In addition, you can design your calls to action for a higher return on engagement, as shown by this study by the PR firm 22Squared.

Practicing engagement

The slide deck from my presentation offers some good practices for creating more engagement, taken from a variety of sources. Ideas include posting five days a week, what time of day to post and which days of the week garner the highest engagement.

Measuring Facebook engagement

The last section of the presentation covers thinking about how to measure Facebook engagement, including mapping goals to actions and setting deeper benchmarking goals. The slide below from the presentation demonstrates this approach to Facebook measurement and quantifying return on engagement.

How are you using Facebook to create engagement? Please share your experiences.

Related

• Nonprofits: Are your Facebook fans engaged? (Socialbrite)

• Four-part series on how to use Facebook strategically (Socialmedia.biz)

• Tutorials on how to use Facebook well (Socialbrite)

The post Tricks to ramp up your nonprofit’s Facebook Page appeared first on Socialbrite.