The content that you place on organic social media directly affects what your reach is.  Reach is by far the most important metric when it comes to organic social media.  

Reach measures how many people get in front of your audience.  How do you get more reach, by getting engagement on your posts.  It’s been stated that the average reach of posts is 5% or 1 in 19 followers of your page see your post. This isn’t much and begs to reason with growing your audiences by followers alone. Recent changes in the algorithms below will showcase how to increase this reach with nonfollowers. 

Engagements can include someone stopping scrolling and looking at your post.  This is something that is directly affected by the creative that you use.  Is your creative eye-popping and standing out?  The next aspect of engagement is when someone comments, likes, and shares. All of these engagements add up to a score that social media platforms are using to increase or decrease the reach of your post.  

Reach should be looked at from the aspect that organic social media should be your community-building marketing. 

When you arrive at a networking event you don’t expect to have a sales call at the networking event but you do expect to create influence.  Organic social media should be used to create influence by showcasing knowledge. 

For all of these reasons, organic social media is at the very top of your marketing funnel.  It makes it the hardest type of marketing to justify and show direct results.  Often someone will engage with you on social media and it could take weeks, months, or even years before they buy from you.

At the end of all sales, people buy from people they know, like, and trust.  Organic social media is your vehicle for this.  

Besides reach, there are lots of other KPIs you should also look for with organic social media.  While this post might be up to date as we type it, it will quickly be out of date as the type of content that gets the most reach is constantly changing.  For an overview of the many types of content that are available to post on social media check out this blog. 

Why has reach been declining? It’s for a number of reasons but always follow the money, for profit reasons.  There is only so much space on the feed of any given social media network and with declining reach, ad spending has increased.  With ad spending increasing there is less space to show organic posts. It was a strategic move made to increase profit.

Now we are seeing a different game with social media networks chasing short-form videos (TikTok, Reels).  It started with TikTok and since it gained so much popularity with short-form videos it has moved to other platforms.  TikTok though, to gain users is our guess, did their algorithm different in that your post was not necessarily placed in front of those who followed you but rather in front of those who watched similar content.  This did two things, it kept the data of what type of content you liked on their app and it increased reach.

Now other platforms are opening up reach in order to have users create short-form videos on their platforms.  It’s almost an organic reach cocaine where you want to post more and more as your reach increases.  They have you hooked.

So let’s talk about content types and start with short-form.

Currently, as of the moment, these types of short-form videos are arguably getting the best reach.  It’s a tough call but making almost every post in a short-form video might be the best strategy.  The problem is how quickly can a video be made in the short-form video. More authentic and less branding will work but the actual content has to also seek to entertain or inform.  It’s a delicate balance in your overall marketing of allocating proper resources at all parts of the funnel with the time involved to produce. 

Focusing, at the moment on short-form video could increase your reach and perhaps your following as well. 

Content from a video can be a video that you have just uploaded which we are generally speaking here content that is a non-short-form video.  If the video is engaging then you will get the reach you are looking for.  You might by nature get the reach due to our current obsession with watching videos.  How long you can keep them on the video will also arguably increase your reach.  

This might be content you have created for YouTube.  It’s advised to natively upload the content, rather than sharing the link.  Social media algorithms are designed to reward content that keeps someone on a platform.  

Another form of video content is live videos.  You will receive more reach by nature of everyone being notified that you are in fact live.  There are lots of tips to keep your audience engaged while live video such as asking the audience questions and even acknowledging the audience. 

Can you tell a story with the copy that you post? Naturally, people are drawn to stories.  The copy or what is above your creative needs to evoke emotions with the written words used.  Do you do more selling and more storytelling of talking through the feelings of the creative at hand?

You do need to test both short-form and long-form copy with the social media content that you use. Remember your goal is to get engagement so the long form will automatically initiate someone opening up the “see more” which in turn is a measurement of engagement. 

Another way to get engagement with your copy is to ask questions or pose thoughts that evoke answers.  Be sure to engage back though!

Did you know that hashtags serve as a way to found by subjects for both users and search engines? Using hashtags that are popular gets your content with the type of people who would enjoy the content of that nature. Be sure you have a strategy here, don’t use the same ones over and over.  Change up the order of the hashtags and always be searching for more.

This is honestly something you have to test.  Social media channels have built algorithms to keep someone on their platform.  Therefore naturally speaking having links in your post will get less reach.  

The strategy here might be to slice off $5 a day to use ads to promote your content.  With this strategy, you not only will get more reach but you will be able to actually choose the audience who sees your content.  This will make it more powerful.  

There have been methods where you go back to the organic posts and post the link in the comments vs the actual post. 

Another method could be creating graphics that talk about leading someone back to the website.  This could be as simple as directions on where to find the content.

Posting any type of content without a piece of creative such as images put you at a distinct disadvantage. You have to first battle with the constant scrolling.  So arguably it’s the most important item of a social media post.

One way you can stand out is to create graphics that are branded with your company logos and brand colors to be recognizable. 

Creating a calendar of the types of posts will help you determine what type of branded images need to be created to follow along with your content posting.

With this type of content, you are using current events that are going on and tying them with elements of your own company. Since trending content naturally gets more attention when you tie your company to it, it is a natural piece of content for reach.  This is one you have to be careful to ensure that your company does align with current events.  You could also argue that current events could be as simple as the current holiday.  One way to take it a step further though is to personalize the holiday to your type of business and culture. 

Anytime you can involve your employees with your content you can increase reach.  This naturally happens by tagging them in the post and complementing them. You can do simple things such as adding pictures to tips that you have created.  You can pull out reviews that call out specific employees.  You can remember important dates such as birthdays and anniversaries.  You can showcase company culture by posting videos of you having fun. 

Overall there is value in building a culture where it takes a team to win and involving your employees in your social media post is a win both online and offline. 

Are you following the 80/20 rule? Your content might not be getting reach because you are promoting too much and promoting causes less engagement.  No one wants to be sold so if your feed is full of content that is all bout your products and services it’s not going to be very engaging.  If you have been posting this way for a while it might take a while for algorithms and your user to reengage.  

Content Blindness

Have you been posting the same type of content for a long time? If are you using the same graphics or the same content for a long period of time, you might need a little shock to the system.  You can add elements that are off-brand and or add a new color! 

Try posting something not related at all to garner attention.  Remember if someone wasn’t engaging with you before they will start to see fewer posts.

Less can be more here if you are getting the reach.  If you make 3 posts and you get more reach with one short-form video, then make the video.  The time invested in the first three posts can be made up with one quality post.  It’s quality over quantity.  The most important part is to be consistent with your posting. 

Content Timing

When you post should be when there is less content.  Think about typical times, when people are online. This could be right before work, during lunchtime, and later in the evening.  This is when they post.  If you post in times other than those times you will not be drowned in the noise of everyone else posts.

Going back to old posts in which you had a high engagement and adding more comments to the post can help old posts be brought back to the spotlight. This simple tactic should be part of your engagement plan with your own content. 

You are going to get really high reach with groups that you own.  You need a reason though to have a group and the reason can’t be to sell a product or service.  It has to reach a complimentary higher purpose that aligns with your brand. For instance, we started Indiana Business Owners.  The content in that group is all about content for small business owners.  Maintaining a separate group from a page is a lot of time but it will increase your reach.

This is your own engagement with your own content and followers.  The original post is set for you to get that engagement so when you do you need to respond fast and often. This means monitoring of all posts and having conversations with your users. This will increase your reach by having meaningful conversations.

We have written before that organic posting alone is not enough to get yourself in front of the right audience.  A paid media strategy will need to be implemented to reach more people and a targeted audience. But Organic social media is needed, it’s a matter of how many resources are allocated to the reach of your organic channel.  Remember with all marketing you should be thinking through the efficiency and how to reuse the content that you are creating in multiple ways. If you need help creating content for your organic social media, reach out!