Increase Your Facebook Reach by 100% Starting Today

Learn how to reach more of your fans with each #Facebook update!I am an administrator on about 10 active fanpages, and lately I have been watching the Facebook reach numbers. There were several updates last year that seemed to make a big difference in who saw your updates, and while early numbers were reporting 16%, they didn’t seem to distinguish between the different types of updates.

Since then some experts have released information saying that all text updates get more reach, but I haven’t seen real numbers for a comparison to links and pics. Just to make things clear photos are the most engaging type of update on Facebook, but sadly enough they are not getting very far. Let’s have a look:

Our Example Facebook Reach

This fanpage has over 10,000 fans, but I am seeing similar results on other fanpages:

Facebook reach and engagement numbers

I took each type of post for the last 30 days from Facebook Insights, and cleaned up the export of data. These are the numbers you see when you go to Facebook Insights, I made sure they match up.

The numbers I’ve highlighted are as follows:

  • 1595- the average number of people reached with a simple text update

  • 89.7- the average number of people engaged with each photo post

  • 45- the average number of people talking about each photo post

What amazed me from these numbers is that simple text updates got almost double the reach as a photo, and close to 4x the reach a link gets. On my own fanpage I’ve had fans tell me they can get around sharing the link by putting it in the comments. I have tried this, but I don’t have any decent data on it yet, so go ahead and try that. I am assuming that just like every other Facebook loophole it will be fixed.

Facebook total reach screenshot

The numbers above are averages, but each type of text post, or even photo is different, for instance on our most recently engaging text update we had 38 likes and 2047 views, and we’ve noticed that as we post more text updates, the amount of people they reach is growing as well.

Types of Text Updates for Facebook

My current goal is to move away from the sterile professional feel on our fanpages, to a homey, relaxing and community atmosphere. In the past two weeks we have started welcoming new guests, and being more conversational than normal. This has increased new likes, has our fans commenting more and is more fun to look forward to engaging with.

Be Personable- Connect- Relate With Fans

On a particularly difficult afternoon I posted on a client’s fanpage something similar to this: Have you ever had one of those days where you just want to crawl into a hot tub, grab a bottle of wine, and look at Pinterest? Who’s with me?

Other posts that have increased reach are:

  • At peak update time
  • Ask questions (“Like” this comment to welcome our newest fans!)
  • Relate with how followers are feeling (Cabin fever in the winter sucks- well, unless I’m in a cabin)
  • Tell a story (The baby spilled cranberry juice on the carpet this morning. The good news is, it didn’t get on me. The bad news is, I’ll be scrubbing it out all weekend. Are you looking forward to the weekend?)
  • Talk about current events (Are you ready for some football?)
  • Offering a special – this will be covered in a new blog post and no, I do not mean the average grab my download, I mean a truly valuable offer to your fans, that they should not miss!

Admittedly we haven’t posted a lot of photos since we noticed the numbers above, because we are trying to improve reach. When we were posting several photos, our fans were less excited and engagement would decline.

It seems our current engagement with the text updates is improving our Edgerank (just an observation) as we are increasingly seeing more reach. Over the last two days our posts are reaching 1700 – 2000 each.

Recommendations From This Data Discovery

Just about everywhere you go lately you will see people telling you that photos get more engagement. If you are anything like us, after the 6th photo post you realize your fans want them a bit more sparingly. You”ll also notice that those photos are not reaching as many fans (our numbers show about half, but we have seen as little as a few hundred from this fanpage), and if you don”t reach them, it”s like your message isn”t there.

Posts that Engage & Reach Your Fans

I can”t promise that you will improve Edgerank by posting more text updates, but from this accounts and others I work on, we can see that your reach can improve and if you put engaging content out there, it should help you continue to reach more fans. What I recommend from this information is to post 2-3 times per day, and make a majority of these posts text. Include your blog post links in this 2-3 times per day, and once a week post a photo, and another time a video. If you find more good links to post, do it, but track your numbers, and follow your insights to see what is working.

Get Help With Your Social Media Content

If you are having problems with your fanpage and reach, or even knowing what to post for content, I can help. I can provide content, or just consult on the content you have and make suggestions. We can start with a social media analysis, and go from there, just click the big blue graphic below to get started. Also, sign up for our newsletter so you can be notified when we post about our new social media giveaway ideas, I”m sure you are going to love it!

© 2013, Social Media Consultant. All rights reserved.

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