How to reach your Facebook fans for free

So you’ve built up a good fan base – maybe you’ve even spent money promoting your page, offering a giveaway (read my blog here on how to grow fans through cheap prizes >>>) and now you want to interact with your newfound friends.

In the travel industry we offer all sorts of great advice on travel, hot tips, special deals and promotions – but Facebook, in their endearing wisdom, have decided that only 5% of our fans, the same ones that have ‘Liked’ our page because they want to see what we offer, will in fact have the opportunity.

I have succumbed, like most of us who run online businesses, to paying to ‘boost’ some of my posts or run ads in the sidelines for specific events, but this week I had a ripper of a breakthrough with organic reach, so I want to share it with you!

What is organic reach?

I’m glad you asked. Organic reach is the amount of people who saw your Facebook status for free. As I said above, the latest algorithm (and they change it constantly) is that about 5% will see it. BUT, if those 5% interact with your status, then at least 5% of their own friends will also see it – and so it goes on.

So what’s the trick?

Another good question! The trick is 1) to post a status that already has the highest reach – in other words, not a link and not a pic with text written separately, but a straight pic or straight text.  And 2) your image or your text needs to encourage interaction.

It should fall into one of these categories: aspirational, inspirational, controversial, cute or funny. Pose a question to make people ‘Like’, comment or share.

Here’s what happened this week

I am working with New Caledonia Tourism NZ and we’ve just run a competition to win a trip for 2, which we paid to promote on Facebook. Our fans now number around 6,300. This week I grabbed a gorgeous image of 2 empty sun chairs sitting on the edge of a secluded beach in New Caledonia and wrote “What’s Missing?”. Thanks to the nearly 100 people who commented and the 80+ who “liked” it, the post reached nearly 50% of our fan size. Most people answered with “Me!” and some tagged their loved ones (gaining further reach). In all, over 3,100 people saw this image without us paying a cent.

Here’s what it looked like. My next task of course, is to repeat this feat on a regular basis…

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