Facebook Reach Generator Means You Pay To Play, but do you have to?

Interaction on Social Networks is key to success.  If we don’t have interaction we are not building a community.  Facebook has over 900 million active users and each user spends, on average, 405 minutes per  month so there is a lot of interaction happening on Facebook making it a social network that is hard to ignore.  But if you have a business page on Facebook and your updates are not being seen by the majority of your fans then you are loosing out on opportunities that the viral nature of Facebook has to offer you.

Facebook recently launched a new advertising option, which is not rolled out to everybody yet, called Reach Generator. The Reach Generator is a Facebook advertising tool that enables you to pay a fee (based on the number of fans you have) to guarantee that your updates are seen by at least 50% of your fans each week and 75% each month.

My question to you is if you are effectively creating a community on Facebook do you really need to spend on advertising?  Surely if you have interesting updates and an active community  you can avoid using Facebook Reach Generator? I believe the answer is yes.

Facebook has an algorithm called Edgerank that works out what content is interesting to your fans and strips out everything else. So if you are wondering why you are not getting much interaction on any offers you have or interesting status updates this might be the problem.  Edgerank is a scoring system that Facebook uses to work out which updates it will share and to whom.  There are 3 main components to this:

• Weight – Weight is about interaction.  If you get more interaction on your updates your  Edgerank weight increases.
• Time Decay – If your status update is more than 24 hours old it’s not that interesting to Facebook.
• Affinity – This is about how each individual fan interacts with your page.  The more they interact the more likely they are to get updates from you.

Would you like to reduce your advertising spend on Facebook or never have to advertise in the first place? Here are 5 tips to help you get results without having to pay a cent.

1.  Photo’s and Videos Will Increase Fans That See Your Posts

If you are not including photo’s or videos in the majority of your posts in Facebook then you are not reaching as many fans as you could.  Facebook gives higher ranking to photo’s and videos in status updates so this means you have a better chance of being featured and being seen by more fans. You should consider having a photo or video with every update.

2.  Ask Questions to Get Interaction

If your status updates are interesting and relevant to your audience you will get interaction.  Encourage people to like, comment and share your updates.  When Facebook sees more interaction your updates will achieve  priority over updates that  have little or no interaction.  One simple way to improve your interaction is by asking questions.  Start asking a question on your posts and watch your interaction levels rise.

3. Competitions are Great for Increasing Interaction

There are many companies that provide software for running competitions on Facebook (Strutta, Wildfire, Shortstack, Involver etc).  When you run competitions and create a  buzz you can get a lot of your existing fans to enter and share out the competition to their friends.  This interaction is great for your Facebook page and helps to extend the reach of your page through fan updates.

4.  Create a Leaderboard to Encourage More Active Participation

When there is a gaming element to anything on Facebook this helps encourage more interaction.  If you have lots of comments and interactions already on Facebook but you want to incentivise more then create a leaderboard that displays a table of the most active fans ranked by those who participate most.   The leaderboard concept taps into people’s natural drive to compete and be on top. Take a look at Booshaka who provide leaderboards for Facebook.

5.  Encourage your fans to post

A Facebook page is about building up a community and the more your fans are involved in this community the better.  Allowing your fans to post updates directly on your page will help drive interaction.

Facebook are about to launch a range of advertising options to increase their advertising revenues but Social Media is all about building communities and relationships.  Ensuring your community is active on your page is key because Facebook will always reward pages with lots of interaction. The more interaction with your community, the longer they spend on your page and the higher the potential gain for Facebook from advertising. So align your goals with Facebook’s and help your brand gain more momentum. Are you committed to getting the most out of your Facebook page? Start by implementing the above techniques and measure your progress. We would love to hear how this is working for you, feel free to post your comments and tell us about your results!