5 Organic Ways to Improve Your Social Media Reach
Have you noticed a sudden decline in the organic reach of your social media accounts? This can be a cause for concern. But before you fret and resort to buying followers for paid ads, you should know that there are factors that contribute to these changes--particularly the social media algorithm and the increasing competition in your platform.
When your organic reach on social media suffers, there are things you can do to maximize your organic visibility, increase followers, and improve engagement.
Here are five organic ways that will further your social media reach:
1. Optimize Your Social Media Profile
The first step is to tweak your social media profile for better visibility. Optimize your page name (if possible) and your page description by using keywords. You will notice that pages with keywords in their Facebook profile names often outrank leading brands in a related industry. To finish, add a link that leads users to your website.
2. Optimize Your Content
Develop your social media content to improve your social media reach. Here are some tips in optimizing your content:
Publish Evergreen Content
These stories are always of interest to readers and can stay relevant for long periods. This lets you redistribute them several times over.
Post at the Right Time and Day
It is a common misconception that you should post when everyone is online. In fact, your chances of getting noticed are higher during non-peak hours. These are generally the best times to post:
Facebook – 1 pm to 2 pm, Thursdays and Fridays
Twitter – 12 pm to 6 pm, weekdays
Instagram – 5 pm to 6 pm, Wednesdays
Observe Content Variation
To make your posts interesting and engaging, you can incorporate the use of:
Emojis – these capture more attention than normal posts as they convey emotions and are eye-catching.
Hashtags – these mark your posts as belonging to specific categories or containing specific subjects, increasing its chance to come up in public searches.
Memes – these help make your content and brand more relatable and relevant.
Images – image quotes use both language and imagery to engage your audience.
Videos – these don’t have to be fancy or posted regularly. Your videos can range from something as simple as a few-second video clip to a video tutorial. Best if they are shareable!
GIFs – this is a form of media that’s somewhere between a picture and a video. You can source existing GIFs on GIPHY, create new ones using Twitter's built-in GIF function, or use the Boomerang app.
There are plenty of ways to keep your feed interactive. You can relate your post to a trending topic, launch a contest or giveaway, create polls, or add a call-to-action like “tag a friend who will love this!”
3. Target Quality Audience
While your goal is to maximize your followers, it is important to focus on the people who are more likely to engage with your posts. To do this, you can tweak the settings of your posts to target specific members of your audience. It will vary for each platform. For Facebook, you can modify your target audience based on a variety of factors such as demographics.
4. Promote
There are plenty of ways to promote your published content. You can build-up your presence in distribution platforms like Buzzfeed, DrumUp, and Viral Content Bee to amplify your content on social media. Likewise, you can look into sharing plugins such as Social Warfare or Sumo Share to drive more social media shares for your posts. You can also use plugins like NextScripts to automatically publish blogs across your social media accounts.
5. Get Involved
Finally, make sure you interact with your followers. It may be the most time-consuming activity, but you will definitely notice the benefits in the long run. Respond to their comments and find out what topics and issues are currently being talked about. Provide answers to questions, get their opinions, or simply comment to show your interest.
All these strategies help your brand retain existing followers, attract more followers, and build a stronger reputation. Keep all these up and you’ll be reaping the results in no time!
Need help in increasing your social media presence? Our marketing team can help you!