If you Google “is organic reach dead?” you’ll find dozens of articles that deal with the decline of organic reach. If you’ve experienced a drop-off in post reach on the social channels you employ, especially Facebook, you’re not alone. But the picture is not as bleak as it might appear. Organic reach is not dead; it’s evolving.
Read on to learn about what’s really going on with organic reach and what you can do to overcome the challenges.
Global Digitization
According to the Digital 2022 Global Overview Report, conducted by Hootsuite and We Are Social, internet penetration is 62.5% worldwide. Furthermore, the average person connects to their digital devices for almost seven hours daily.
These statistics spell great news, right?
Trillions of people on the internet mean it should be easier to drive engagement.
Your organic reach (the number of people who see your posts) should be rising.
You don’t need to boost posts or run ads.
However, the reality is different.
Social channels want you to pay for ads or boost your content. There’s a less than subtle push in this direction. Facebook’s newsfeed algorithm restricts the average visibility of organic posts to 5.2% (We Are Social data), meaning that only 1 in 19 people who like your company page would see your post.
The Hootsuite/We Are Social research found that Instagram interactions are around 0.96%, and Twitter is at 0.045%.
A bleak picture, but let’s move on to what you can do to overcome the algorithm impacts on your organic reach.
Create Content That Engages and Converts
If you create engaging, valuable content that connects with your target audience, you’ll sustain and grow your organic reach no matter what the algorithms do. Therefore, knowing your audience is critical to your success.
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- Who are you trying to reach?
- What are their pain points?
- What do you offer that addresses those challenges?
- How do they consume content?
Understanding your audience–their behaviors, interests, needs, and concerns must be the foundation of your digital marketing plan. As a result, you’ll save time and money and improve your organic reach.
Plan and Create Content
Content still works, but it needs to be engaging, educational, helpful, and targeted to your customer personas. In addition, consumers today are looking for digitized experiences. So create content that’s original, unique, fun, and passionate.
Planning and strategizing ahead of time allows you to post compelling and provocative content consistently. It’s best to develop an editorial calendar one to two months ahead of time across all the social channels you employ.
Mix up content types–blog articles, videos, infographics, podcasts, memes, etc. If you have published many blog posts that cover a similar topic, group them, create an ebook or white paper and offer it to your potential customers.
Leave CTAs that drive your audience to your website or social profiles.
Social Media Scheduling Tools
You have enough to do without sitting in front of your digital device posting content. However, consistently posting is key to growing organic reach and retaining your current customers and followers. Even if you have a team or dedicated staff member to handle social media marketing, you still want to use a scheduling tool.
Both Facebook and Twitter allow you to schedule content from their platforms. However, a better solution is to use one of the many social media scheduling tools such as Later, Hootsuite, Buffer, and SproutSocial.
Take Advantage Of Hashtags
Indiscriminate use of hashtags is not going to help your organic reach. You might even find marketers who say hashtags are dead, but we disagree.
Hashtags continue to serve as drivers of post reach, especially on crowded digital channels.
Today, when almost the entire buying process is done online, from searching to checking out, strategic use of hashtags will make it easier for potential customers to find you. Not everyone searches by keyword or brand name. Studies have found that online consumers find new brands when searching by hashtag and that they will make a purchase if the business offers what they need. So, don’t forget about your hashtags.
Branded hashtags can create an online identity and build brand communities–another effective way to grow organic reach. Social listening tools help you discover relevant hashtags and those of your competitors.
Use Tagging To Grow Organic Reach
Tagging effectively increases your organic reach on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. You’ll generate more traffic and draw more viewers to your posts. Tag an account or influencers in your industry.
Video Shorts
Video is still the top-performing content type, but with TikTok’s rise in popularity and YouTube Shorts, short-form video is becoming the primary driver of business growth. Significantly increase your organic reach on Instagram by producing Instagram Reels, especially since the platform favors this content over post feeds.
You don’t need sophisticated video equipment to produce compelling content to engage your customer audience. You just need creativity, boldness, and a willingness to experiment. For example, if you’re writing blog articles on your website (hopefully you are), you can quickly make snippets and turn them into TikTok or InstaReels videos. As a result, you’ll extend the life of the awesome text-based content you’re creating and improve your organic reach.
Utilize The Strength Of Each Platform
All social media platforms are not the same, so once you’ve created your customer personas, get familiar with the rules, language, and preferences of each social channel you use. For instance, the LinkedIn conversation is more business-focused, so a typical TikTok video might not garner many views. Many hashtags work on certain digital channels, whereas on others, it might be geotags, long-form content, or live feeds.
Familiarize yourself with the tools and features of each social channel and maximize your use of them.
Protect And Grow Your Organic Reach With A Distribution Strategy
In a previous article, we discussed the importance of a content distribution strategy. However, even if you follow all the tips above, it is doubtful that your target audience will stumble upon your website or social profiles. Ahrefs reports that 90.63% of all web pages get no traffic from Google. Therefore, you have to be proactive.
Once you understand your audience and their content and social channel preferences, you’ll be able to design a content distribution strategy that moves your content to the places where your customers hang out. With a robust content distribution strategy, you’ll extend the reach of your brand messaging and establish your authority in your niche, both of which boost your organic reach.
Use CTAs that direct your audience to your website, online store, or other social profiles.
Optimize Your Website
Getting more visitors to your website requires effort, but many strategies are simple steps.
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- Format your pages with proper meta titles and descriptions, H tags, and SEO-optimized keywords.
- Use internal links.
- Optimize your website for mobile.
- Increase backlinks.
Organize your content–poorly organized content is difficult to navigate and negatively impacts UX. You’ll lose repeat visitors and experience higher bounce rates.
Make it easy for visitors to know
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- who you are
- what you provide
- how your products or services benefit them
- how to make a purchase
- where can they find out more about your business
- how can they contact you for help or more information?
Ensure your social channels are displayed prominently on every page and include social sharing buttons for every blog article.
Bottom Line
Organic reach builds trust with your audience and increases brand visibility. Despite the challenges, organic reach remains valuable to your overall marketing strategy. Of course, it doesn’t replace paid marketing, which you’ll need to do to drive leads and reach a larger audience. However, the two strategies together help you accomplish your business and marketing goals.
Improve your organic reach by
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- knowing your target audience
- creating customer personas
- consistently publishing and distributing engaging and helpful content
- optimizing your website
- capturing the strengths of each social channel.