How is your marketing strategy faring these days? If you are like many of the small business owners out there, the answer could be mixed. Are your paid efforts doing pretty well, while your organic reach has had better days? If the answer is yes, you are experiencing the present-day marketing trend that has people talking. What should you do about it? Let’s find out.

Can You Save Your Organic Reach?

In his Forbes article, “Why Your Organic Facebook Reach Is Still Falling — And What to Do About It,” Jayson DeMers explores this dilemma in depth, specifically examining the Facebook platform.

Right now, page owners are extremely frustrated. It’s become incredibly difficult to get organic posts in front of fans without putting up cash. Even pages with plenty of fans are receiving minimal organic reach.

According to the Edgerank Checker’s 2014 research, there was a big drop in organic reach between February 2012 (16%) and March 2014 (6.51%).

Another more recent study from Social@Ogilvy reports that this number has dropped to just 2% for pages with more than 500,000 likes.

Does this mean your page is doomed? Fear not. There may be some remedies to turn this situation around!

According to DeMers, here are some common pitfalls you may be making:

Exclusively relying on photos: Yes, engaging pictures are amazing for reach and visibility, but not always. If a page owner only relies on photos for reach, it’s almost guaranteed to not be the best content choice. Sometimes a video, text, or link will be more effective. Different research has differing opinions (and numbers) on the best content choice:

• Research from Locowise says posts with links perform best, with an average reach of 18%. (They say videos and text-only posts have an average reach of 9%, while images come in at 7%).
• Social Baker’s 2014-2015 analysis of 670K posts on 4,445 brand pages report an average organic reach for image posts at 3.73%. Their research states that the most effective post types are now videos (8.71%), then text-only posts (5.77%), followed by links (5.29%).

Not using videos on Facebook: Yes, videos are intimidating and time-consuming, but the payoff can’t be overlooked. According to Animoto, 73% of US adults are more likely to buy a product after watching a video that explains it. Additionally, 96% of consumers find videos helpful when making online purchase decisions. However, Facebook organic reach still poses some challenges with videos. Small changes – such as using Facebook’s native video uploader (instead of linking to YouTube or Vimeo) may help nab some traction. If you have some great short videos that you know your audience will love, upload them directly to Facebook for maximum engagement.

Not tracking what content your audience loves: This seems obvious, but you need to know what resonates with your audience and what your fan base loves to see. Whether it’s videos, images, photos with links, or something else, let the engagement from your previous posts guide your roadmap to future posts that you know will work.

Other Ways to Increase Your Organic Search Results

According to the Search Engine Journal blog post “7 Ways to Increase Organic Reach on Social Media,” here are some other quick tips to improve your strategy:

Know your site-driving keywords: If you know what words and phrases are organically working for your site, put these into your social media posts. Measure your search volume data to see if this is working.

Understand the corresponding content for these keywords: To best know if you are meeting audience needs, make sure their organic searches are leading them to your site. If there is a common phrase (such as a solution-seeking question), incorporate it into your social media posts. (Use a great hashtag, too).

Discover what your competitors are doing: If there are keywords and content that your competitors are using to steal traffic (and sales!) away from you, re-work your strategy appropriately to boost your own social media engagement. If you aren’t already doing so, use a competitor discovery tool to find new competitors, track all-star keywords, and monitor successful content.

Uncover peripheral competitors: While you already know your main competitor(s), look for the brands and other products that are taking traffic away from you. When you discover these gray areas of overlap for your content, audience, and traffic, you can better engage your target audience with relevant outreach.

Track social engagement more specifically: When you create niche keyword groups (based on products, features, etc), you can better segment posts and keywords to improve your marketing strategy more effectively.

Tailor your content to the right language: If you really want to reach your target audience, talk to them in the right way. Never lose sight of today’s popular words and phrases (as well as conversation style), and use this lingo effectively in all of your posts. In the same vein, don’t get too comfortable and stop monitoring the trends. If you start speaking using outdated terms, your audience will tune you out and head elsewhere.

Vary your content: Simply put, you need to mix it up on social media! If you have a trendy keyword or topic to jump onto, create the right content in different ways across your different channels, whether it’s a video in one place and an infographic in another. These varying assets and unique formats will pay off big-time through engagement and post sharing.

Do You Have Anything to Add?

This conversation between paid vs. organic advertising will continue to be a hot-button topic for many years to come. While there is no magic solution for achieving organic reach, there is one rule that will always remain true: post content that is valuable to your audience. This is your best chance for engagement and visibility. Even if you have an unlimited advertising budget for paid content, it will fall flat if you aren’t giving your target customers the information they need.

Would you like to put in your two cents about paid vs. organic advertising and your experience? Tell us here!

This article is made possible by Checksforless.com. For more than 35 years, Checksforless.com has provided over 500,000 businesses with high quality business checks, deposit slips, and other banking supplies with easy ordering and fast production times; all at the guaranteed lowest price in the nation. Our discount business checks are easily customizable and compatible with over 4,500 software programs including QuickBooks® and Peachtree/Sage®. Email or call us toll-free at 800-245-5775.

References:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2015/05/13/why-your-organic-facebook-reach-is-still-falling-and-what-to-do-about-it/#2d4b7b672c84
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/7-ways-increase-organic-reach-social-media/154614/