How to create Facebook posts for high organic reach in 2018
How to work with Facebook’s algorithm to increase your organic reach.
Social media and marketing are continually evolving in response to user data. As of January 2018, Mark Zuckerberg outlined the most recent changes, which prioritise meaningful Facebook posts from friends and family in the Facebook News Feed over brand pages and public content. These type of wide-ranging changes to social media marketing will be followed by social media consultants with great interest.
What does Facebook value?
Understanding the Facebook algorithm starts with knowing the core values. This will help all social media marketing specialists on your journey to crafting an engaging content on Facebook in 2018:
- Friends and family come first. The driving principle of the News Feed is to connect users to the people, places and things they want to be connected to. Aside from family and friends, Facebook found that people want their feed to inform and entertain, so they strive to prioritise content that is interesting to each user personally.
- All ideas are welcome. Facebook welcomes all ideas while making sure everyone feels safe. They aren’t choosing the issues users should read about. They’re in the business of matching users with the stories they find most important through user actions and feedback.
- Authentic communications. Facebook is prioritising genuine stories while trying to stamp out misleading, sensational and spammy ones.
- Users ultimately control their experience. Who knows you better than you know yourself, right? Facebook has created features (follow and “see first”) that allows users to customise their experience.
- Constant iteration. It should come as no surprise that Facebook will continually gather data and feedback, which will help them improve the News Feed.
If you’re keen to discover more about how Facebook decides what to show in the News Feed based on user interactions, the VP of Product Management for News Feed, Adam Mosseri, explains all.
With that in mind, how do you create effective Facebook posts?
1. Entice with text
Visual content will always be popular, but you still need text to convey your marketing message. You’ve got a few seconds (less than!) to capture their attention. Hook them from the beginning by keeping it punchy and concise. Questions, exclusive facts, insights and weird words always spike curiosity. If you’re going for long-format Facebook posts, try the pyramid structure of content and keep your links to a minimum – Facebook considers too many links as advertising and will limit the organic reach.
2. Inspiring Facebook imagery and video
Images are a great way to capture moments and give insight into your brand. Video is even better, with interactive content now an integral component of every social media and marketing campaign. Be sure to use natural photos and videos that don’t scream “stock photo” and stick to the Facebook image specs. How to’s, live video streaming Q&A’s and product announcements are a great start. Don’t be afraid to interact with your audience in the comments to drive engagement.
3. Optimising your Facebook posts
To influence the organic reach of your social media posts, consider the audience, the right time for publishing, the best content for sharing and inviting people to follow your brand page. Facebook’s Audience Optimisation tool is available for social media publishers to help them reach the right people at the right time with the right content.
4. Understand when to boost
We get a lot of question about whether it’s worth paying to boost your post or simply rely on organic. We believe that boosting posts that have already gained a good level of organic reach is a good place to start with your experimentation and testing. This will keep your relevance rating safe in Facebook’s eyes and you’re less likely to see a drop in organic reach after boosting social posts.
If you need help creating a sophisticated digital presence for your brand, get in touch with our social media management specialists at iFactory today.
