How To Grow Your Facebook Page Organically

Getting organic growth on Facebook has always been a controversial topic when it comes to social media marketing. Since the Facebook algorithm change of 2018, not a few social media experts have reported a sharp decline in Facebook reach over the last two years.

Interestingly, Facebook algorithm updates have been found to diminish the power of traditional organic strategies. Data from the APAC region has shown that over time, organic growth on Facebook has been low for Pages and brands.

The good news is that the Facebook algorithm is beatable. Therefore your desire to drive organic growth through unique contents can reach a wide audience, and still make your favorite distribution channel, Facebook as effective as ever.

Organic Growth Explained

Organic growth is simply the number of people who see your content without the assistance of paid distribution. It includes people who are shown your posts in their own feed or because their friends have interacted with you.

Facebook reach, on average, has dropped to a mere 6%. That simply means that for every 200 fans you have; only 12 of them are going to see your content.

Facebook Organic Growth Is dropping, why?

Off the top of our head, we can think of very few major reasons why Facebook organic growth is dropping.

Profit for Facebook:

users often forget that Facebook is a profit making business enterprise. There are over 18 million business pages jostling for the attention of users. A reduction in organic growth makes sense so as to drive these businesses to invest more in sponsored posts and ad content.

More content:

Every day, more and more content is being published with lesser news feed space for all to be shown. According to thedrum’s opinion, for every minute, more than 510,000 comments and 293,000 statuses are posted on Facebook. With this, Facebook has to limit the reach of pages. Given that the average Facebook user in the U.S. likes 70 pages, the massive volume of content from brands they follow could overcrowd their feed.

Personalized news feeds:

Facebook provides the most relevant contents to individual users. To increase engagement and optimize user experience, content is streamlined to each user’s interests.

What Facebook’s organic reach does for you?             

Let’s also give you a peek at what organic reach does for you as an individual or business.

• It helps you reduce the Cost per Click of Paid Campaigns. Considering the fact that you can easily invest a fortune on Facebook ads and see little or no return, therefore organic reach is critical to augment your spending.
• Generate quality leads. Attracting potential buyers and channeling them into your sales funnel is great. But it’s even better when you do this organically; it merely costs your time and effort.
• Facebook has also created means of generating organic reach such as Facebook Stories, Facebook Watch, Facebook Groups, and Facebook Live. But most times, these avenues are under-utilized.

How does Facebook determine my reach?

A lot of factors go into how Facebook determines your reach and this is immensely frustrating to business owners, marketers and individuals. Simply put, the process is complicated and there isn’t a definitive answer.

Facebook uses more than 100,000 different factors that weigh into what pops up on a newsfeed for a user. That doesn’t mean some factors aren’t public. In fact since the original Edgerank algorithm wasn’t replaced, as it was folded into the new algorithm. Some of the factors used then are still equally valid:

• Affinity: refers to how you relate with your followers and how they interact with your brand.
• Decay: Old posts are less likely to be shown in the feed.
• Inventory: this refers to the total number of contents from friends and publishers that can be displayed to a user.
• Signals: data tied to a specific post — for example, the type of content; when it was posted; who posted it; and how many likes, shares and comments it has. These are the only factor brands can control and use to signal (pun intended) to Facebook that their content is relevant to their target audience.
• Predictions: this is a measure of how likely a user is to be interested in a post based on analysis of what content that user prefers.
• Weight: Different types of content are weight differently, and Facebook gives more weight to visual content.
• Relevancy Score: a number assigned to a post based on the likelihood that a particular user will enjoy it.

How to Organically Grow Facebook Page

Keep in mind that growing takes time and conscious effort.

Create Brand Relevant Content

In the world of growing Facebook page and reach, content is king.

Brands that go on to grow their page organically have gone beyond just the art of marketing their products. They’ve included a hyper-focus on their ideals. They appeal to people’s perception rather than their desire the product. This is not to say products don’t matter. But in the online world, your ability to sound convincing and create familiarity is the difference between making it or not.

Before you jump off to start creating random contents, it would be prudent to consider your online strategy and in this case, your Facebook strategy. Feel free to ask yourself; what’s my brand ideal? Who is my market? What are their worldviews?

Answering these few question will help determine contents to push out on your page. Consequently, these Contents will resonate well with your Facebook followers and they can have meaningful interaction with it on your news feed.

Use Appealing Visual (videos and pictures)

In today’s Facebook, videos are a must have.

If you mostly post images and your reach has been falling off lately, try creating some videos and see how they perform. Also, if your videos aren’t getting the same reach they used to, try making link posts that highlight content your audience will love.

Thankfully, making a video is no longer as difficult as it used to be. Better still, Facebook offers you the ability to create different types of video ranging from Facebook live video to animated videos or product videos. Others include: User Generated videos, Infomercials, Unboxing videos and Whiteboard videos.

Creating video contents requires more effort when compared posting an image with text which is why people often shy away from it. But in the real sense, it’s definitely worth the time you put into it.

Embed your Facebook posts.

Improve your reach by combining your content marketing with your Facebook content. This is especially true if you’re raking in a lot of traffic with your content marketing on you blog. The fact remains that Facebook may be reducing organic reach within their platform, but they also have a limit.

So basically, if you have a blog then you have an audience they can’t touch.

This can easily be achieved. All you have to do is click the drop-down button in the upper-right corner of a post, click “embed” and paste the code into your blog.

By embedding your Facebook posts on your blog, you can provide a lot more reach to content you want to promote. This is a great way to attract new users as well as improve your engagement and reach.

Embrace user-generated content

User-generated content is simply content created by your audience about your brand which you can also share on your own page. Asking your followers to post a review of your products or an unboxing experience is a great way. Even asking them to share photos for a chance to win a prize goes a long way to encourage user-generated content.

If you can get a user to create content featuring your brand, then you just scored a major trust boost to other users. Also psychologically, people are more interested in content their friends and family produce other than branded messaging.

After all, what’s more exciting than making content for your audience? The answer; Letting your audience make it for you.

Drive Engagement

Before the algorithm change, people often wonder; Do Facebook posts get high engagement because they have high reach, or do they get high reach because they have high engagement.

In the wake of the algorithm change, the-chicken-or-the-egg styled question was answered. Facebook’s Head of News Feed Adam Mosseri announced that: “Page posts that generate conversation between people will show higher in News Feed.”

In simpler terms, Facebook will display your posts to more people if they encourage users to interact with one another. In particular, content that initiates conversations in the comments section will receive a major boost to organic reach.

The question next is how do you get users to interact with each other? Invariably, this will depend on who your audience is, their disposition towards your posts and ultimately what they care about, but we have a few suggestions to get you off the mark:

• Share content that resonates to strong opinions.
• Include questions at the end of your posts seeking people’s opinions and comments.
• Utilize trending topics that everyone wants to speak on.
• Use Facebook’s live video Broadcast content to talk to your audience in real time.
• Start an interactive poll thread.
• Or simply ask for community feedback on a new content.

Avoid Engagement Baiting

Engagement baiting on Facebook comes in different forms, but they will ultimately get your organic growth and reach punished. Although your goal is getting users to connect around your content more on Facebook, going about it the wrong way will eventually hurt you.

One thing to keep in mind in other to avoid baiting is that the Facebook algorithm update is not just about prioritizing posts that get a lot of engagement; it’s also about prioritizing posts that encourage meaningful discussion and interaction by users.

For this reason, Facebook will reduce your organic reach if you use manipulative means to search for engagement.

Examples of engagement baits include posts that contain statements such as “Like if you’re a Leo, Love if you’re a fan” or “Tag a friend who likes tennis”. These are considered engagement baits because they push users into padding a post’s engagement statistics by soliciting for interactions. They are considered as “spam posts” on Facebook since they corner users into interacting with likes, shares, comments, and other actions.

Avoid making such posts for easy engagement, growth and reach; because once the Facebook algorithm realizes you’re doing it, your whole Page will have its reach limited as a punishment.

Start a contest

One assured way of getting users interested in your content is to start a contest, giveaway, promo or sweepstakes on your Facebook page. It works virtually every time!

You can really boost your page growth by running a contest that encourages people to take action on your content. There are a number of factors to keep in mind to make your contest effective.

One, your prize has to correlate with your brand. This is to ensure that you attract participants who have an interest in both you and the reward.

Secondly, it’s best to encourage users to interact with the contest post, preferably by commenting. Encouraging users to comment on your contest is the simplest way to assure the Facebook News Feed algorithm that your content is engaging and thereby increase your reach.

Finally and most importantly, take absolute care to ensure that your contest post doesn’t look like engagement bait. While Facebook expressly allows Pages to run contests, they can’t require users to share the contest on their Timeline or their friends’ Timelines in order to participate. Pages are also not allowed to ask users to tag their friends in the contest post or ask for a specific reaction as a pre-condition for entry.

If you can keep to these guidelines, you surely will be on your way to running a successful contest on Facebook, growing your page and expanding your audience along the way.

Get verified

You must likely know what Facebook verification is. It’s the blue badge that shows up right next to your Page name that proves you’re kind of a big deal.

Getting verified on Facebook proves to users that your Page is the official representation of your brand and can be trusted. This helps you stand out from fan pages, parody accounts and outright spam accounts while establishing authenticity with your audience.

Having the verification badge will also help your Page rank higher than other Pages with similar names in Facebook searches. This translates to more organic reach for your brand.

Plus, people will be able to find your Page more easily and will be less likely to follow or interact with unofficial Pages instead of yours.

Facebook hints at badges being available to “eligible brands, media organizations and public figures.” Having a high follower account and appearing in at least one news article is likely to help as well

To get verified, your Page needs to be complete. This means it must contain a cover photo, a profile pic, a name, and at least one published post.

Next, you need to make sure your Page agrees with all of Facebook’s terms of service.

Conclusion

Growing any Facebook page isn’t an easy task. It involves lot of work on your part and respect to the new rules of Facebook which are always changing. The upside of organic growth is that it’s absolutely free and won’t cost you.

We’ve spoken on a few methods to grow organic following but there are lots more which we didn’t mention. The key is to keep trying new tactics which conform to rules, constantly tweaking your strategy and producing great content. Eventually, the results you seek will find you.

Here are my 9 things that you need to consider while getting organic followers for your brand without spending any money on Facebook ads.