Social media has undeniably become the ultimate tool for businesses of all sizes to connect with their audience at an accelerated scale. Unfortunately, this is no secret, and as countless brands jump onto these platforms, others are finding it difficult to draw in and captivate the right prospects.
While paid advertisements can provide immediate results, focusing on organic social media growth is so valuable. It offers a sustainable method for building meaningful engagement on your social channels, while also conserving your budget and achieving lasting, impactful business growth. The approach hinges on forming authentic relationships with your target audience and developing a dedicated community.
Driving organic growth on social media isn’t so straightforward, though.
As a leading social media marketing company in Melbourne, our team at Digital Eagles presents a selection of tried-and-true strategies for amplifying your organic social media reach and helping you accomplish your business goals.
What is Organic Reach on Social Media?
Organic social media reach involves increasing your brand’s awareness, engagement, and follower count through natural interactions and content, without direct relation to paid advertising, to cultivate authentic relationships with your audience, allowing your brand to grow its influence over time.
While paid advertising can deliver fast results, organic growth offers long-term benefits for sustained social media success, including:
- Develop deep, long-lasting connections with the audience
- Centers on producing high-quality, engaging content
- Demands ongoing effort and patience for enduring outcomes
- Builds trust and credibility for your brand
- Encourages the growth of a devoted and interactive follower base
- Cost-effective and sustainable
What is the Best Way to Boost Organic Social Media Reach?
1. Focus on the Right Platforms
Some common engagement questions for social media businesses revolve around whether you must be active on every platform. Each has its own format and user base, and your audience may not even use all of them, making it essential to concentrate your efforts where they count.
To identify the appropriate platforms:
- Speak with Your Target Market: Conduct surveys, send emails, or call top customers to discover which platforms they frequent for both business and personal use.
- Analyse Share Counts: Use your blog’s social sharing analytics to see where your content is being shared most frequently.
- Take Note of Your Competitors: Observe where industry competitors are active. If they are not using a particular platform, find out why – it might not be worth your time either.
2. Optimise Your Social Media Profiles
Optimising your social media profiles is akin to applying SEO tactics to your website. Every detail can be fine-tuned for better visibility and engagement, so:
- Choose a Memorable Username: Make it easy to remember and brand-specific.
- Use a Recognisable Logo: Ensure your profile picture or logo is clear and identifiable.
- Craft Keyword-Rich Descriptions: Write natural-sounding descriptions that include relevant keywords.
- Include a Trackable Link: Add a link to your website that you can monitor for traffic.
Apply these strategies when posting to select effective images, keywords, and calls to action. These practices are relevant across all social media platforms.
3. Create & Share Evergreen Content
Creating evergreen content maintains a consistent presence on your social media. Unlike typical posts that can quickly lose relevance, evergreen content remains valuable and engaging over time.
Even if your industry seems dry, focus on solving persistent problems or providing educational and entertaining content to stand out. Humour, shock, and awe are effective emotions to target with evergreen posts, as they are more likely to be shared and remembered.
Remember, avoid content with an expiration date and aim for topics that will remain relevant.
4. Use Targeting to Maximise Organic Potential
Targeting specific segments of your audience can significantly boost your organic reach. Platforms like Facebook and Instagram offer organic post targeting, allowing you to specify who will see your posts.
For example, you can target based on:
- Gender
- Relationship Status
- Education Level
- Age
- Location
- Language
- Interests
- Post End Date
Similarly, you can use hashtags on Twitter to categorise your posts and reach the right audience. Utilise any available options to ensure the most relevant users see your posts.
5. Better Allocate Your Time & Resources
Quality trumps quantity in organic social media. Meta has found that users regularly encounter over 1,500 stories each day, but only about a few hundred are shown based on relevance.
What does this mean?
Well, posting ‘more’ isn’t the solution. Instead, focus on high-quality, relevant content. Quality posts will increase your organic reach more effectively than flooding your page with numerous updates.
While there isn’t a one-size-fits-all formula, the Buffer blog suggests posting twice a day. Just don’t hesitate to experiment with different frequencies to find what works best for your unique audience.
6. Post During Non-Peak Hours
Another of the many engagement questions for social media is knowing when to post when everyone is online. It’s an often-under-appreciated aspect of your strategy that can bury your content in a flood of posts, so try posting during non-peak hours to help your content stand out and get noticed.
Research suggests these are optimal posting times:
- Facebook & Instagram: Thursdays and Fridays between 1 pm and 3 pm
- Twitter: Weekdays between 12 pm and 6 pm
- LinkedIn: Tuesdays to Thursdays between 7/8 am and 5/6 pm
Always analyse your audience data to determine the best times for your followers.
7. Post the Right Types of Content
While videos might not always guarantee success, they are certainly worth experimenting with. Diversify your content mix with images, status updates, links, and videos. Use tools like Facebook Insights to track and analyse which types of posts perform best for your audience.
8. Promote Your Social Media Profiles Everywhere
Maximise your social media presence by highlighting your profiles wherever your business is visible, such as your website, storefront, business cards, email signatures, and more. Add follow buttons on your website to make it easy for visitors to follow or like your pages without leaving your site.
Cross-promote your social media profiles to convert likes on one channel into followers on another. Ensuring your social media presence is known across all platforms can significantly boost your organic reach.
9. Maintain the Right Balance of Promotional and Useful Content
Strike the right balance between promotional and useful content. While promoting your products or services is important, users also expect valuable content that benefits them.
Adopt the 80/20 rule: 80% of your content should be helpful and informative (how-to guides, articles, news posts), and 20% can be promotional.
Ready to Grow Your Organic Social Media Reach?
Are you looking to enhance your social media presence and engage with your audience more effectively? At Digital Eagles, we specialise in helping businesses achieve sustainable growth through robust organic social media strategy packages.
If you have any engagement questions for social media or are ready to get started with social media management, please contact us today.
