As a social media manager, ensuring your brand’s Facebook page gets the highest reach possible helps convert your audience to clients, donors and customers. But if you’re feeling like your followers aren’t engaging with your content like they used to, you’re not alone. Organic reach and engagement are down across Facebook.
According to Hootsuite, the average engagement rate of an organic Facebook post in 2024 ranges between 1.52% and 2.58%.
Way back in 2014 (a full decade ago!), Facebook identified the rapid growth in content creation as the primary contributing factor to decreased reach. Now, in the age of AI, that problem has only intensified. Every day, your brand’s page is competing against AI-generated content, bots, and thousands of legitimate businesses and people who post to Facebook.
Furthermore, according to Meta’s Widely Viewed Content Report for Q2 2024, Facebook users tend to be seeing much more content from friends and Groups than the pages they follow. In fact, the majority of the organic content that people see on Facebook falls into the following categories:
- Friend posts
- Unconnected / Recommended posts
- Group posts
The full breakdown reveals even more insights:
Notice how the percentage of popular content shown to users because they were following that page was a whopping zero percent. The majority of content is recommended by Facebook’s algorithm, or shared into the News Feed by a friend. (Note that while this report only examines the most-shared content, it still demonstrates how Facebook’s algorithm impacts smaller brand pages.)
So how do you beat the Facebook algorithm and ensure people are seeing your content without paying for ads every time you post? Here are a few easy ways to boost your Facebook organic reach:
Tip #1: Put Sharing in the Spotlight
As Meta continues to push content from groups and friends, sharing is becoming more essential. The Widely Viewed Content Report found that 13.6% of views came from posts shared by people’s friends.
This puts pressure on social media teams to create engaging content that will actually drive a user to click “Share.” Find creative ways to ask your audience to share content and add their own thoughts as a comment on your post. Make sure it’s informative, entertaining, or inspiring content that your fans want to share with their own friends and family.
How to put it into action: post a graphic with your nonprofit’s mission statement and encourage your fans to comment or share it if they agree.
Tip #2: Lay Off the Links
When creating content, many social media professionals lean into a call for action, often for a click to register, donate or visit a website. However, if you’re trying to improve your organic reach, break free from the links. Try working posts into your feed that have no links. (Yes, you read that right.)
The Widely Viewed Content Report found that the majority of top-performing content did not have links. In fact, 96.7% of the views in the US during Q2 2024 did not include a link to a source outside of Facebook. It makes sense; after all, Facebook wants you to spend as much time on their platform as possible instead of visiting third-party sites.
How to put it into action: Post a well-lit picture of your latest restaurant special and don’t link to your reservation page.
Tip #3: Prioritize Partner Content
One way to expand your reach is to find ways to connect with new audiences — and an easy way to get in front of new audiences is by engaging with other pages via tagging. If you are partnering on a community event, or have sponsors and donors, ensure that you are tagging those pages and checking in at those locations.
This is an organic way to get your content in front of audiences who follow or like those pages. As a bonus, it also gives those pages exposure to your audience. It’s a win-win, and a proven way to increase the number of relevant followers on your page.
How to put it into action: Post a picture of your staff at a community volunteer event and tag the businesses and organizations involved.
Ultimately, as social media marketers, we are likely always going to be at the whim of changing algorithms and shifting priorities from each platform. However, by thinking strategically — and being open to experimenting with new types of content — you can help to ensure your content is seen by the right people and reaches as wide of an audience as possible.
Searching for more ways to improve the reach of your brand’s page on Facebook? Check out:
