Free Ways to Increase Your Facebook Reach

Organic reach for Facebook Business Pages is almost nil these days. A very small percentage of people who like your page will see the content you post. Therefore, you will need to have at least a small budget to boost your posts or place ads on Facebook in order to reach your target audience. However, there are still ways to increase your Facebook reach without paying for ads.

Below I share a few methods on how to engage and grow your business presence on Facebook, for free.

Organic Methods to Increase Your Facebook Reach

Ask for Likes

Since your chances of your Facebook posts reaching fans organically are small, getting likes may seem like a moot point. However, one reason brands still try and get likes is for vanity purposes: the more likes a page has, the more popular and successful it appears to visitors.

But having a healthy amount of likes is helpful beyond proving a brand’s popularity. Knowing who organically likes your page helps Facebook target your boosted posts, and ads. It gathers information on demographics and interests of your fans to create similar targeted audiences that you can use in your advertising strategy. So getting a few hundred likes in the beginning will help your Facebook reach in the long run.

Here’s a few ways to go about it organically:

• Invite your friends to like your page. Facebook makes it really easy to do so. Click on the blue Boost button on the left hand side of your page, or on the ellipsis next to the Share button below your cover image to invite friends to like your page.
• Send an email to friends, family and colleagues inviting them to Like your page.
• If you use Twitter, set up a direct message with a link to your Facebook page, and ask people to visit and like your page. Many times I’ve fulfilled this request for others, and I then send a message back asking for the return favor.
• The simple act of liking other pages, and sending a message asking for return action can also get you more likes. Be sure to ask for likes from Facebook users, not from a business page itself, as only likes from users count.

Join Facebook Groups

Groups are communities of like-minded people where you can exchange ideas, share information, network or sell stuff. There are groups for music lovers, dancers, real estate professionals, book lovers, and a great deal more topics and interests.

You cannot join Facebook groups as a business page, but must use your personal profile. However, once you join a group that is centered on topics related to your industry, you can share information about your business, and posts from your page or your blog.

Make sure it’s not overkill, and the content you post is related to the group. Read the group’s rules as to what type of content is welcome.

As with general social media posting, engaging with other people’s content and posts rather than directly promoting your business, will generate far more for you in the long run. If you share insightful, engaging comments and content to your groups, including posts from your page, eventually users who find your content useful or even entertaining will check out your page, and maybe even like it!

Engage!

Again, engagement is important across the board. Here’s a few easy ways to engage and increase your Facebook reach:

• Comment on posts from other pages. You can simply make a positive comment, or add another useful tip. This puts your brand name in front of others who see the post and your comment.
• Share content from other pages to yours.
• Tag other pages or users in your posts, and in the posts you share. Do this only if that page or user is related to the content in some way. For instance, if I share an article I wrote about the social media sharing app Buffer, I’ll tag their username, @Buffer, in the text of the post. The team from Buffer will be notified their Facebook page has been tagged, and they will usually post a thank you in the comments section of the post.

This type of commenting, sharing, and tagging boosts your page’s visibility, and creates goodwill with the page/business you mention.

There you have it, three easy ways to boost your presence on Facebook organically. Do you have any other ideas you’d like to share about how to organically get your Facebook page in front of users? Let me know in the comments box below!