How to boost your organic reach on social media

Organic reach on social media is in decline. Organic posts reach just 5.5% of page followers As a result of this, most brands opt for paid social ads to improve their reach. It’s a fast way to reach a large, targeted audience and you can easily measure your performance. But organic social shouldn’t be underestimated or disregarded.

Organic social media is the foundation of any good social strategy. Having a consistent and creative social media presence is key to creating trust, recognition and building relationships with your customers that will keep them engaged with your business longer than any advertising campaign could. 

So how can you improve your organic reach?

Understanding each platform

In social media, you shouldn’t have a one size fits all approach. To effectively reach people, you need to not only understand your audience, but you need to understand the platform you’re using. What image size? Should you be using hashtags? Which hashtags? Geotagging? Shopping Tags? All of these tools can help improve your organic reach when used correctly. The general rule is that content designed specifically for the social platform it will be on, performs better.

It’s not just the post optimisation that you should be taking into account. You should also pay attention to where you are posting. Take some time to understand social media demographics. Depending on who your audience is, you may want to focus your attention on some platforms more than others. If you’re a B2B you should look into growing your LinkedIn presence. If your target audience is a younger demographic, look towards Instagram and TikTok.

Create good content

Once you’ve found where your target audience is, think about what you want to say. There are now more than 60 million active Business Pages on Facebook so your content needs to stand out. The key to successful organic content is to create content that has value. 

Content that is overly salesy or content that offers no value to your audience will fail to drive engagement and therefore fail to hit that high level of reach you’re looking for. 

If your content is educational, entertaining or engaging, people will take the time to respond which will lead to your content being shown more as all social platforms reward popular content. You could answer frequently asked questions, provide a tutorial of your product or offer tips to your audience. Gym clothes retailer Lululemon often hosts workout routines on their Instagram through Live and IGTV. In doing this, Lululemon is placing it’s brand into their customers’ daily routine, whilst subtly showing off their products.

https://www.instagram.com/tv/CEYf1TDn4n4/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Engage with your audience

One of the easiest ways to improve your post engagement is to ask for it!  Asking your audience questions not only provides you with more information about your audience, but it also boosts your audience’s relationship with your business. Fenty Beauty asked their audience to answer a range of polls on twitter to find their perfect foundation. The polls got over 750 answers, which could equate to 750 foundation sales.

Whether you set up a poll on your Instagram story to see which cake they prefer or ask your LinkedIn followers what they’re reading, engaging with your audience is one of the most effective ways of increasing your organic presence.  

This also applies when people comment and reply to your posts. Make sure you always reply back to them and answer any questions they have as soon as possible, whether the reply is positive or negative. People will be more likely to respond to your posts if they know they will get a response back and you will appear more trustworthy as a brand.

Growing your organic presence on social media will not be as fast in gaining momentum as paid ads would be. However galvanising your community and growing relationships with your audience definitely pays off in the long run and is key to growing your business. If you need help in creating an effective social media strategy, get in touch!