Running A Business

How to Increase Your Reach on Facebook Without Paid Promotions

Jun 27, 2013 • 4 min read
Table of Contents

      Lendio-Facebook-PagesFacebook is the most used social media platform. According to expandedramblings.com, on June 2013 it had 1.11 billion users with more than half of them are active daily users. As a small business owner you can’t afford to ignore this big of an audience.

      On Facebook you can post text, backlinks, images and videos. In doing this, your main goal is to get as much reach as possible per post. Here are seven tips to get your reach higher per post without having to pay to promote it:

      Invite all your friends

      Facebook Pages are connected to your personal account. This means you have the ability to invite all (or some) of you friends to like your page. This is a quick way to grow your page when you first start it. If you really want to get personal, you can privately message them—ask them to like your page and whenever they see value in your posts to like, share, or comment on them.

      Don’t post just to post

      Hypothetically you could have as many as 4,000 likes (followers) or more on your page. Anytime you post on your page Facebook analytics will determine if it is applicable to your followers and put it on their newsfeed. “Reach” comes from how many people saw your post. You want to make sure each post provides value to your audience. When a post resonates with a user you get the highest amount of engagement, which increases your reach.

      Engagement is key

      The best thing you can do for your reach is to make your posts “engagable”. It’s easy to state facts or post something as it is but you’re going to get the most engagement when it gets someone thinking.

      • Ask a question (What do you think about this?)
      • Fill in the blank (If I had more money, I would…)
      • Say something outrageous (Can you believe what Donald Trump just said!?”)

      Just make sure that the way you are engaging your audience is consistent with your brand.

      Brand consistency

      The content you share needs to be consistent with your brand. The font, color, and most importantly the message you’re conveying all needs to be consistent. If your message isn’t consistent to your brand, you are more likely to lose reach to certain followers. This is because users can “hide” any of your posts on their newsfeed and have the option to never seen it again in the future, which dramatically lowers your reach.

      Use hashtags

      Facebook finally allowed use of hashtags in their posts. Hashtags are a great way to increase your reach because it opens your posts to another channel to users who may or may not “like” your Page. Try to include at least one hashtag in each post.

      Make it shareable

      Each post has two ways it reaches someone:

      1 .Organic Reach

      “The number of people who saw your Page post in the news feed, or ticket, or on your page’s timeline.” How many people saw your post after just posting it to your Page.

      2. Viral Reach

      “The number of people who saw your Page post in a story from a friend.” How many people shared your post to a on their timeline, on a friends timeline, in a group, on one of their pages, or in a private message.

      Viral Reach is more powerful than Organic Reach because it gets you the opportunity to reach out to a new audience. It’s important to keep in mind that images and videos are shared more than texts or backlinks.

      Crippling backlinks

      Facebook advertises on the sidebar and sometimes on the newsfeed, which makes them money. They don’t want you to leave Facebook.com for that reason. Facebook’s newsfeed algorithm will reward you with more reach if you don’t have a link directed outside the website.  Simply put, if you post contains a backlink your post will have a lower reach.

      The one constant about Facebook is it is always changing. It’s an always evolving bitter sweet relationship.  As time goes one the biggest thing you can do is stay patient and do your research when future changes happen.

      What other social media is your business using?

      Lendio-Blog-Mike-AlderMike Alder is a University of Utah business marketing student and marketing specialist at Lendio. Passionate about entrepreneurship, small businesses, and inbound marketing. Mike shows his passion by sharing stories of successful entrepreneurs and companies with small business owners on the Lendio blog. He makes these big success stories easy-to-apply in simple and easy to read language for the everyday small business owner and entrepreneur.

      Follow Mike: Twitter | LinkedIn | Google+

      About the author
      Lendio Editorial Team

      Share Article:

      Business insights right to your inbox

      Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for industry news and business strategies and tips

      Subscribe to the newsletter

      Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for industry news and business strategies and tips.