How to: Increase Your Reach on Facebook

With Facebook being the largest and fastest-growing social site in the game, businesses all around are looking for ways to expand and grow their reach on the platform. With the recent algorithm changes affecting the visibility of business pages in general, Facebook forces brands to pay to play and to be seen. So how do you increase your reach on Facebook? We'll go through why reach matters and some ways to organically and using paid ads to expand your presence on Facebook.

What is reach?

In the Facebook and social media world, reach refers to the raw number of unique users who see your post or your page. Reach is always measured over a specific timeline period, whether it be the last week, month, quarter, or year. This also means Facebook cannot retrieve a total reach number. Facebook simply tracks the number of unique screens your content appears on, including both mobile and desktop.

Reach vs. Impressions

While reach refers to the raw number of unique users who see your post or page, impressions refer to the number of times your content was displayed. The biggest difference between the two metrics is that impressions do not measure unique visitors. Impressions do however offer a perspective of how many times each user is seeing your content or page over and over again. Just like reach, impressions are always measured by a designated timeline, whether it be the last week, month, quarter, or year.

Pro-tip: Reach and impressions on Facebook are directly correlated. To see the total amount of times your boosted post or Facebook advertising campaign is seen by each member of your target audience, simply divide the impressions by the reach. For example, if you had 300 impressions and a reach of 100, each social user saw the sponsored content around 3 times.

Reach vs. Impressions vs. Engagement

Another common phrase thrown around when talking about reach and impressions is engagement. Engagement refers to the number of likes, shares, and comments your post or advertisement receives. The more eyes on your posts, or reach of your post, the higher likelihood you will receive an increase on your engagements.

Pro-tip: Engagement is a great barometer for how engaged your audience is and can signal which content your audience is drawn to. Take a look through your analytics and see which posts receive the most engagement and find similar patterns!

When thinking about increasing your Facebook page's reach, it is important to remember that Facebook is going to force brands nowadays to pay to play. Luckily, Facebook's advertising platform is pretty advanced and, in most cases, super user-friendly. There are lots of different options when it comes to increasing your Facebook page's reach and we are going to walk through some options.

Focus on growing your page following

The biggest tip we can give to get more eyes on your posts is focusing on growing your following on the business page. That way when you do post on Facebook, you have a built-in audience that will see the posts.

When you first start out with your Facebook page, odds are you are going to have zero followers. Hey, we all got to start somewhere. Once you have invited your entire Facebook friend list to like your page and support your brand, we need to focus on growing the following of those that fit into your target demographic.

Page Like Campaign

Facebook's advertising platform offers a wide range of advertising objectives to cover a wide range of the goals a brand may want to accomplish on social. One of the most beneficial objectives when talking about increasing your Facebook page's reach is the engagement objective.

When you create a new advertising campaign and select the engagement objective, you will be prompted to select one of three goals: post engagement, page likes, or event responses. For our purpose, you are going to want to select page likes.

Creating a page-like campaign is a highly effective way to grow your page's following full of potential customers for a relatively low overhead cost. Once you have selected the page-like objective, it is time to set up your advertising campaign.

Creating your campaign

Much like any Facebook ad campaign, there are three main sections to focus on. That is the audience, copy, and creative.

Targeting

First up, and arguably most important aspect of the ad set up process is the targeting of your ad campaign. Targeting is always set in the ad set level of your campaign. Facebook offers a multitude of targeting options ranging from demographic targeting to interest targeting.

When thinking about your target audience for your page-like campaign, think of your ideal client or prospect. What attributes do they possess? How old are they? Where are they located? What are they interested in?

Every kind of person is on Facebook. When you get creative with your targeting, you are exposing your page to potential customers all over and creating an ongoing relationship with them with the page-like objective.

For a deeper dive into Facebook targeting, check out our blog that tackles the different targeting options available for use on Facebook!

Copy and Creative

When building a page-like campaign, it is important to give the targeted audience a reason to want to follow the page. Unlike friending someone on Facebook, your ideal client has no real connection to your brand quite yet. Your goal is to give them a reason to want to follow your page.

In your creative as well as your copy, explain what kind of content the prospect can look forward to seeing from your brand. For example, if you had a financial practice and wanted to increase your following, your copy would be something along the lines of:

"Want to stay up to date with the ever-changing financial climate? Follow our page for the latest news to keep more money in your wallet."

As always, when designing your creative the goal is always to stop the scroll on social. Think of what would cause your ideal market to stop scrolling. What are some pain points that you help fix?

Pro-tip: Facebook recently got rid of their text limitations in ad campaigns, so take advantage of using big text to catch attention.

Focus on producing high-quality content

When trying to expand your Facebook page's reach, it is all about tricking the algorithm. Facebook is always going to suppress content that is overly promotional and mimics an advertisement. This is the case if you are not paying for an actual advertising campaign or boosting your post.

Once you have grown your Facebook following using a page-like campaign, focus on producing high-quality content on a regular basis to continue to nurture your following.

All in all, expanding your reach on Facebook is no easy task. With the right mix of organic and paid efforts, you will start to see your reach and impressions sore. If you would like to take a more hands-off approach, that is what we are here for! Click here to schedule a consultation to start Turning Social Into Sales.