Have you ever made a post that you love and no one saw it? Even if you have a healthy number of followers on social media, it can be difficult to reach them all with every post and get seen.
Organic reach continues to decline on many major social media platforms, but that doesn’t mean all is lost! By listening to what your audience wants, posting at the right times, covering trends, and utilizing the many strategies for organic reach, you can definitely impact your post reach.
Here are some tips on how to make sure that your social media posts are seen by as many people as possible.
Get Seen By Posting When Your Audience Is Online
The easiest—and one of the most effective—ways to make sure your social media posts are seen is by strategizing the time that you post based on when your followers are most likely to be online.
You can use your account analytics to find out when most of your followers tend to be online and engaged. If you don’t have enough data yet, or haven’t switched to a business account yet (on Instagram you can only see these analytics if you’re a business account so it’d be a great idea to make that easy switch now), you can look at global trend-charts such or check out sites such as Brand Mentions to get a good, general idea of when to post.
Concentrate on ‘on-peak’ hours of engagement, but don’t be afraid to mix it up either. Try posting on a few different days at various times to further the information you can gather on when your followers are engaged. Maybe right now your analytics says you have the most engagement at noon on Wednesdays, but if you’ve never tried posting at three on Thursdays, you’ll never know if that time will do any better.
“Pro tip: Try posting just before peak hours to help your content be the ‘freshest’ when a user opens the app.” – AdEspresso
Get Seen By Boosting Posts To Current Followers
It might be tempting to always be aiming to reach new people, but your best chance of being seen is actually to target users that are already following you. A good way of doing this is by boosting posts.
“After clicking the ‘Boost Post’ button you’ll be taken to a menu where you can begin to choose targeting options. By default, you could opt to include only people who currently like your page—or all current followers and their friends.” – Hootsuite
Let that boost run for at least 2-3 days to increase the likelihood that it will reach the followers who might have missed it earlier. Also, don’t forget to keep an eye on ad frequency to avoid spamming your followers. Yes, that might get you seen, but nobody’s going to like it if it seems like spam, or engage with it for that matter.
Get Seen By Giving Your Followers What They Want
You probably already have some sort of idea of what works best for your followers and what doesn’t, so give them what they want. Share content that you know is relevant to your audience (you can use analytics to help with this, too!).
“Share special offers, behind-the-scenes glimpses, and entertaining facts to give clients, and other businesses, good reasons to follow you.” – Popular Science
Ensure that your audience comes first whenever you’re considering new content. After all, they’re already following you for a reason!
Get Seen By Engaging With Your Followers
The more you engage with your followers, the more likely they are to engage with you consistently in the future. The more they engage with your content, the more likely they are to see your future posts. Social media algorithms favour content that keeps users online – the content they’re engaging with.
“People are more likely to follow an account with which they feel they have a relationship. To foster that type of interaction, make sure to respond promptly when people get in touch with you or give you their feedback.” – Popular Science
Make sure to engage with your followers’ content, too! They’re far more likely to do it in return if you do!
Get Seen By Covering Trends
Even though organic reach is declining, you can still get a healthy amount of it when you post about trending topics.
Use popular hashtags and keep an eye on the news in order to have the knowledge and know when to join the conversation. Consider joining in on a viral challenge, too!
“There’s something about the momentum of doing things as a group and seeing results as a collective that makes for powerful experiences people can tie to businesses and brands. Camaraderie builds trust, community and productivity that will result in social exposure and profit growth.” – Disruptive Advertising
Getting your social media posts seen is all about zeroing in on what your audience wants. Having hundreds—even thousands—of followers doesn’t guarantee your content will have a wide reach. It’s not that easy anymore.
Whether you’re trying to reach existing followers or attract new ones, follow these tips to increase your likelihood of being seen!
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Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in January 2020 and has been edited for accuracy and comprehensiveness.
