Strategy

8 Tips to Outsmart the News Feed Algorithm

Facebook has been testing and changing the algorithm of its news feed which resulted in organic posts losing their reach. In this blog we give you 8 tips on how you can outsmart the algorithm and gain your reach back. If you really want to reach your target audience on Facebook, you will need to get started with Facebook advertising rather sooner than later.

It’s no secret that Facebook is changing its news feed algorithm which results in less reach for organic posts. Last week we told you why Facebook is moving towards non-promoted posts. And if you’ve been managing a Facebook page over the past years, you have probably noticed a drop in how many of your fans have been interacting with your organic posts on news feed. According to research by Hubspot

• organic reach dropped 42% between January and May 2016
• Pages with more than 500,000 Likes, organic reach could be as low as 2%
• between January and July 2016, publishers saw a 52% decline in organic reach on Facebook

This decline in organic posts on news feed reached its peak last week when Facebook started testing a news feed that only features friend’s posts and paid posts.

Reasons for the decline in organic reach on news feed

You might still wonder why Facebook has been changing its news feed algorithm and is slowly but surely moving towards a news feed where organic posts will no longer be visible. There are a couple of reasons.

First of all, there is simply too much content published on Facebook which makes it hard to stand out from the crowd.

Indeed, there are countless Pages producing too much content for too many fans, which means competition for visibility on news feed is high.

Finally, and more recently, Facebook announced that it is trying to meet the demand of its people who want to see content that is most relevant to them, as opposed to seeing posts from each and everyone.

What does that mean to you

Fewer people seeing your Page’s organic posts on Facebook news feed means fewer clicks, comments, and shares. Having fewer social interactions, in turn, means fewer conversions, leads and ultimately customers.

Tips to overcome the decline in organic reach

The good news is that there are ways to deal with the decline in organic Page reach, to outsmart the algorithm and to gain reach in different ways. For instance, you could be more selective about what you publish, pay more attention to what days and times you publish and boost your posts by starting to advertise on Facebook.

1 Be selective about your posts

First of all,  to deal with the decline in organic Page reach you can try to be more selective about what you post. Switch from untargeted, frequent publishing to targeted, selective publishing. Try to get as much interaction from a single post as possible. Even if you don’t boost your posts with money, you can also target to a specific audience.

2 Stimulate the Pages Feed

Remind your fans that they can go to Pages Feed on the left sidebar of their News Feed to see your content.This way, they will stay up to date with your content and see all of your posts in this particular feed.

3 Update notification settings

Whilst you’re at it, you can also tell your followers to update their notification settings from your page. Just go to your page, click on ‘Following’ and select ‘See First’. This way your fans are less likely to miss out on your posts.

4 Encourage people to like your page

Have you noticed that people like your posts but haven’t actually liked your page yet? Next time you post about your newest blog or whitepaper, click on the likes/reactions to see their names and invite them to like your page. This way you can also increase the chance for them to see your posts on the news feed as it will be more relevant to them.

5 Share videos

Scroll through your news feed. What can you see? Most probably videos of puppies and other videos with content that fits your algorithm. There is no doubt that Facebook loves and supports videos on news feed. According to a study, native Facebook videos have a 186% higher engagement rate and are shared more than 1000 times. Videos are an engaging way to make your fans stop and watch them.

6 Broadcast on Facebook Live

Even though videos are doing fine on Facebook, live broadcasts trigger even more engagement with users spending three times more watching live broadcasts than traditional videos. Share authentic, behind-the-scenes content to attract and interest your fans. Combine these live videos with Facebook ads and you are good to go.

7 Use Facebook advertising

Even though those basic tips might do the trick to increase your organic reach, nothing beats paid posts. If you really want to gain more reach on news feed, you need to start treating Facebook like a paid ad platform. The formula is simple: more money = more reach. Since Facebook has turned towards a paid marketing platform rather than an organic one, it makes sense to spend money on Facebook ads. Facebook’s organic reach will eventually arrive at zero. So if you really want to reach your target audience on Facebook, you will need to supplement your organic efforts with some paid advertising. Remember: it’s only a matter of time until organic reach hits zero so you’re better off by getting started with Facebook advertising. You’re just one click away to try out our Facebook advertising platform with its unique features for free. This leads me to the last tip…

8 Go beyond the basics and use our platform

Of course, you can go ahead and start advertising via the Power Editor but if you want to gain added value you should try out our advertising platform. We offer a bunch of tools and features that can help you maximise your advertising efforts of your campaigns to name but a few:

• Personal URL tag builder
• Hyper Optimisation Engine
• Automatic Audience Creator
• Conditional Publisher
• Migrate Campaigns across different brands
• Lead Form Generator
• Native Workflow
• Multiple Ad Creator
• Bulk Uploader
• Ad Fatigue Preventer
• Dynamic ad templates
• And more..

Now it’s your turn to turn the news feed upside down and apply those 8 tips to gain your reach back. Even though those tips might be useful, they do not guarantee success. In the end, Facebook has turned into an advertising platform. So it’s only a matter of time until you have to start paying to get seen.