Any company wanting to reach a larger audience, increase sales and lead generation, and connect with customers must have a presence on Facebook. However, most companies fail to make a mark on the largest social networking site. Studies show that even companies that post regularly on their Facebook pages – even six or seven times a week – fail to reach even a quarter person of their fan base. This means that all the content published on your company page manages to reach or is seen only by just over 15% of your fans. Moreover, Facebook has never officially revealed any formula to increase the reach that content has but knowing the new EdgeRank algorithm could help social media writers create Facebook optimized content.
EdgeRank is used by the social network giant to find out the most share-worthy content. Three factors –affinity, weight and time multiplied together determines the worth or the value of the content. Here are some tips that will help you create and market Facebook content that is bound to increase brand exposure for free.
Be aware of the content you are posting
It doesn’t matter how many marketing or social networking tactics you try, the content will be engaged with and shared only if it is relevant, original and of the highest quality. If you give your fans great content, it will encourage them to share it thereby increasing the reach of your company. It is pretty obvious that eye-catching content attracts more attention and in turn is given more weightage by EdgeRank. Content that encourages comments should also be posted. Research shows that words like “when”, “should, “would”, etc. engages fans the most.
Get to know your audience
Pumping out content does not immediately guarantee Facebook success. The content must be relevant to your audience/fans. You must analyze their posting history and figure out the kind of content that obtained the most shares, likes and comment. Future content should be based on this analysis to widen your reach as much as possible. Use Facebook Insights feature as much as possible so that you can know if your fans are accessing the content from tablets or desktops and when your fans are reading the content.
Make fans out of your fans’ friends
Facebook now provides a new feature known as “Friends of Fans” to page administrators. This feature, which is a part of Facebook Insights, allows the admins to gauge how many users they can potentially reach. Use Facebook ticker to monitor your fans’ Facebook activities and make sure that they engage with your content. This will ensure that their activities (likes, comments, etc) appear on the top of the news feeds of their friends. This will convert some of their friends to your fans.
Another way to reach out to fans’ friends is to use Facebook ads. Facebook ads can be set to target only the friends of your fans or in many other ways depending on the type of audience you wish to engage. However, ads should be a secondary way to communicate with Facebook users.