Facebook Reach **FREE TIP***
Facebook Reach is still a massive topic in the Social Media world, and this post today has kind of come a little off the cuff for me. I am currently really busy finishing my first paid product, and was having a look through my own Facebook post’s reach, and it suddenly struck me how far a little bit of effort really does go with Organic reach.
This might sound REALLY obvious what I am about to say, but IF I (who lives, eats, breathes, sleeps Social Media) didn’t really pay attention to this, how many others haven’t?
Facebook Reach CAN increase quite dramatically by 1 single share of a post. I was looking at a post today, wondering what I had done differently to make it reach a lot more people than most other post, particularly when this post contained an image – which as I know from previous research I have done, reaches far lower than text only updates on Facebook.
I had shared the post on my own personal Facebook profile and in just doing that it had “reached” over 200 people more than it would have if I had just left it on my business page with NO further action (hoping that one of the 30 odd people who had seen it would have shared it for me)
I appreciate that what I am telling you about Facebook Reach is nothing new here, BUT how many of you actually pay attention to your statistics to notice this in the first place? I know Facebook tell you not to promote your business on you personal profile, but if they are both YOUR spaces, then a little bit of crossover isn’t a bad thing, particularly if in some cases you can increase your FREE reach by 75% or thereabouts?
Imagine if you have a small team or community that can work together to promote such posts and increase your Facebook Reach – quite quickly you could get your article, update or photo seen by well over 1000 people on Facebook for FREE.
I know what I am explaining is basic virality practice, but with EVERYTHING else that is associated with Social Media now, I think a lot of people (I include myself in this category) have forgotten what and how easy the basic principles of virality work.
There is nothing wrong on leaning on a few people that you trust to help you spread a post about – and its much better for your PAGE insights if the share has come direct from the page (afterall thats what you want people to see – your business)
I did 1 share from my page to my personal profile and the insights were just under 75% higher than a standard post ….. The Facebook Reach for the post was 269 at the time of taking the screenshot 41 of those were “organic” and 229 were a result of me sharing that post on my Facebook personal profile. If 4 more people I knew were to share that post then for FREE over 1000 people would have seen that post approximately.
Considering my Facebook page has 1552 likes, that wouldn’t be a bad Facebook Reach for the post.
What do I think YOU should be doing then?
Of course I don’t think you should share EVERYTHING on your own Facebook profile, it would be quite annoying for your “friends” but I do think that you should at least be sharing some of your business page posts on your own profile, because whilst Facebook are allowing people to see them through viral sharing, you should maximise on this. As a business wanting to drive traffic to your site, I suggest that you share at least one article / blog post / product from your website via your business page …. Absolutely.
If you are a part of a group on Facebook, or have some strong business connections much like I do with Tims’ Minions & OnlineIncomeTeacher then you can help one another out by sharing some posts both via business pages and personal profiles. Lean on the group, connections and ask if this is something other members would like to do also – afterall it is mutually beneficial for everyone to get their page seen by more people.
In the beginning what drew people to Social Media in the first place was how quickly you could spread a message online to limitless people, and when the parameters were set in by the networks, people became very embroiled in the “paying for advertising” debate, and forgot that Facebook Reach can still be natural and free by just tapping into your own personal network.
I think a lot of the time people are quite wary of sharing posts on personal profiles or asking for people to help with sharing, but if this is your business, livelihood or you want this to be your FULL TIME job then you have to be prepared to put yourself out there, ask for help from those around you.
Sharing a post from Facebook takes seconds for someone to do, and if they are industry friends, then the chances are they would only be too happy to share something for you on their personal page, and if they are your actual friends, then they will be only too happy to support your efforts, because that is what friends do.
If you take a look at these screenshots of some posts I’ve made – you can see clearly the differences in what a little bit of effort can do (and that Facebook still weight plain text updates the best organically too – so my old post on this still stands)
Example of Reach Count Based On Me Sharing This Post On My Personal Profile ONCE
Text Only Update With A Larger Organic Reach Than Any Other Type Of Post
Organic Reach Of A Facebook Post That Includes An External Link
Hope you all have a great afternoon! Back to the Think Tank for me
Clair 
A very interesting post Clair, Facebook is a business and shouldn’t stop people using is a business, often our friends and family might want to know what we are upto without actually being fans of our pages so what is wrong with a bit of cross promotion and sharing?
We do it with everthing else we find on Facebook, so why not our own? The idea of having a team who occassionally share each other’s business posts is a cracking idea, the idea of getting a larger reach for free beating Facebooks paid options is just right up my street. We accept shares that come from friends more than the promoted posts we get in our feeds.
When I did a promoted post I got grief and messages from people moaning at me saying they didn’t want them in their feeds, I know Robert Walker from YieldKit had the same issue, but who complains when a friend shares something they find interesting? We either accept and ignore or we accept and read it, but we never complain.
Great idea and I like it a lot.
Andi
Andi Leeman recently posted…Screencast-O-Matic.com: Creating Video Tutorials to Make Money.
Hi Clair,
Very interesting article! Can see that you have though about this quite carefully. I got put off posting on my personal profile after Facebook warned about doing this, but I can see the benefits if you do if now and again. Anything that can help your posts reach a bigger audience is a good idea (especially if it doesn’t involve the infamous “promote post”).
I still wonder about text/media updates. I have experimented with both types on my FB page and I tend to get a slightly higher reach with picture updates, rather than text updates. Mind you, my page reach is is all over the place at the moment.
But yes, posting updates on your profile could be a great way of getting some extra free exposure.
Great post Clair!!!
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I have been looking at my personal profile and business page lately to see if I can increase the interactions and looking at what people interact with. What makes me laugh is that I can put a status on my personal page about the cup of tea Im drinking and I will get a flood of comments. I put a status update on my business page of a party that has taken a LOT of effort and people seem to ignore it! Maybe I should start putting posts up on my business page about how I am enjoying a nice cuppa! I have shared one of my posts from my business today on my personal profile, so it will be interesting to see whether I get any more interaction
I always ponder about posting my stuff on my main profile….
Like you say, the reach would be far greater – especially since I do not really go out to promote my Blog FB page all that much. I may do a little test run soon. Great tips, and interesting stats.
May not big the target audience though?
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