Cedric Brown

If you’ve ever been responsible for managing a page on Facebook you’ve likely noticed how difficult it is to get your posts to reach your page’s fans lately.  That’s because Facebook’s algorithms have made it tough for marketers in the past few years to organically reach their audience.

Through my previous experiences and my current internship as the social media director for Student Startup Madness, it seems lately that in order for you to really be effective you’ll have to invest in paid ads.  Sure, $5 every now and then isn’t bad, but if you find yourself spending it daily the cost will really add up.

Luckily, putting money behind your content isn’t the only way to organically reach your audience.  Here are some things I’ve noticed in my own work that allow your Facebook posts to truly reach your fans organically.

Balance – If the saying is true that “marketing speaks to you, while advertising yells at you,” then some organizations’ pages are nothing more than a constant advertisement.  Doing this over time hinders your page’s reach to your audience and Facebook makes it harder for you to reach them when you’re simply selling to them.  Instead, balance your content by sharing outside information that might be related to what your page’s purpose is, but isn’t directly selling something either.

Originality – Facebook’s algorithms are smart enough to recognize when you’re simply stealing content from other sources.  However, too much unoriginal content can work against you and limit your reach to fans.  That’s why Facebook tends to reward content you “create” yourself, whether that’s homemade videos, pictures from your phone, or even memes you generated.  There’s a bevvy of other content creation sources such as Canva, FontStudio  and Font Candy, which allow you to make your materials as well.

Timing – Ensuring your content has balance and originality can only take you so far, but if they say “timing is everything,” then you need to know the best times to post in order to reach the most fans.  But how can you determine the best times to reach them?  This goes back to my posts about using social media analytics – in this case, Facebook Insights – to figure out what times your fans are most online and when you have the most (or maybe even least) traffic to get your message across.

I’d be remiss to tell you that there is an exact science to Facebook posts; because there isn’t (at least one that I know of).  Sure there are a number of “best practices,” and there’s nothing wrong with using them for your page. Ultimately though, posting on Facebook is a matter of initial trial and error, until you figure out what works best for you.  Only once you do that can you really develop a consistent rhythm – which ends up turning into your own best practices.