Increasing Your Organic Reach

As mentioned in The Current Truth Behind Organic Posts For Business, organic reach across social media has been (and continues to be) on the decline. It’s not ideal, but we’ve provided some tips to help your brand increase its organic reach! 

Choose The Right Platforms 

You might want to be present on all social media platforms so that you’re visible everywhere to all types of consumers, but this may be damaging for your brand or just a waste of time. 

This goes back to knowing your consumers which we talked about in 3 Rules of Marketing You Need To Know and knowing what each age group (within your audience) cares about which we touch on in Millennials vs Gen Z and How To Reach Them. What you need to do is find out where your customers spend their time – you can make an educated guess based on their age and what they buy from you, and do your research by having different campaigns on different platforms to see which ones perform the best. Or, you could simply…. Ask them! 

Don’t underestimate the power of a simple questionnaire. As long as it’s short and somebody receives something for their time (don’t overthink it, it could easily be 15% off) it’s an easy and effective way to find out consumer preferences and to determine which social platforms you should be on.

Be Found 

Now that you’ve chosen the right space(s) for your brand to be present, it’s time to get noticed by your loyal following and well… get followed.

Of course, it’s nice to think that people will Google and search far and wide to find your brand on social media, but unfortunately, that is not the case. People (yes, even the people who have followed you from the start!) don’t care enough to find you and are very lazy, so you have to make it easy… how you ask? 

• Make sure your username relates to your brand’s name and is easy to find (if you have a name that’s never been used this step is easy)
• Make your photo your logo, or at least a variation of your photo, this is where brand recognition comes to play (it makes everything look cohesive and your brand easily identifiable) 
• Have a trackable link back to your website, this is also good to see what kind of people are coming from where 

Less Is More

Instead of having as many stories as you can possibly fit in one day, try to focus on having specific messages you want to communicate that day. If today is about promoting a sale then do that, if today you want to highlight some issues your brand stands behind then most definitely do that. 

The idea is that you want to communicate without overwhelming, once people get overwhelmed they will skip your stories or possibly unfollow so try to take it easy. “The average user is subjected to 1,500 stories PER DAY, do you really want 500 of those to be from your brand alone? You don’t.

Back To Knowing Your Consumers

Ok we talk about this a lot, but it’s important so….. we’ll repeat it. PLEASE PLEASE GET TO KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE. We’re sorry for yelling but it needed to be done. 

Not only is this good for figuring out which platform your brand should be on, but it’s also great for digging deeper and further segmenting your audience. If you find out different customers are found on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram then further figuring out which gender(s), age, locations, etc are where can help dictate what you post and where. 

Promote Yourself Where You Can 

Hopefully, this doesn’t need to be said, but in the event that it does. Be your brand’s biggest fan, because you should be! 

Anywhere you see traffic from the public you should be promoting your social platforms where people can find your brand. Whether it be your physical location or website, you should have social icons with a handle either directly under it or linking to said profile. 

Properly Engage 

Depending on how big your brand is you may not be able to reply to each and every comment but try your best to. The information above is very important, but if you don’t care enough about your consumers to engage with them, then there really isn’t a point in having a social platform to begin with. 

There are of course exceptions, being that you don’t respond to trolls and anything that goes against community guidelines. In those instances, it’s best to block users and delete comments. In regards to positive and/or genuine feedback, it’s important that your users feel seen and heard by you or they’ll leave. 

We hope this information helped you better understand how to optimize your organic reach while it continues to decline across the big social platforms. Check out What Email Marketing Can (and Can’t) Teach You About SMS and Are You Communicating What’s Important Right Now to further enhance your brand!   

Vanessa Niragira, Oakville, Ontario, October 2020

Additional Resources

https://mention.com/en/blog/organic-social-media-reach/

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