How to Improve The Organic Reach of Your Funeral Home’s Facebook Page

If you are like most people, you probably have the misconception that your Facebook fans (anyone who has “liked” your business Facebook page) see everything you post on your page. This simply is not true. In fact, according to Ogilvy, organic reach (the number of people who see a non-boosted post) on Facebook is between 2% and 6%, depending on the number of fans the page has. Why is this?

As Facebook usage has grown over the last few years, the engineers have utilized complicated algorithms to make users’ news feeds manageable. You, as a user, simply could not begin to view or digest the amount of information that would flow through your news feed otherwise. Also, Facebook is in this thing to make money. The explosive growth of Facebook now allows them to charge businesses and organizations, which are competing for your attention, to increase their reach through Facebook ads.

Now, put on your business hat. Short of paying for Facebook ads, how can you improve the organic reach of your business page? What are the elements that comprise the algorithms Facebook uses? Certainly the engineers at Facebook are not going to share their “secret sauce” with the public, but these things, based on each individual user’s activity, almost certainly factor into the calculations:

• Post types that receive the most interaction from a user will be more likely to be served up to that user. These types include photos vs. text vs. video.
• How the user interacts with the Facebook ads that come across his or her page determines content the user will see in the future.
• Because users can hide posts or mark them as spam, their activity in doing so has a big impact on what they see.
• The Internet speed and the speed of the device(s) used by a person factors into the content the user will see.

In addition to user activity, Facebook has its own priorities in determining content:

• Facebook currently places top priority on video and photos.
• The more a user interacts with content from a particular page, the more Facebook will serve up information from that page to that user.
• Older posts are less likely to show up in a particular user’s feed. They will be replaced with newer posts that have come in since the user was last on Facebook.

So, to sum up what all this means for how you can increase organic visibility for your business page, here’s what you need to know. A user will see more of your business posts if s/he regularly likes, shares, or comments on your posts. The user will see more of the post type (text vs. videos vs. photos) with which s/he typically engages. If a lot of other users like a post you have made on your business page, Facebook will serve up that content to more fans of your page. And, conversely, users are less likely to see posts you’ve made if others fans have reacted negatively (hiding or marking as spam) to those posts.

You can see that improving the reach of the content you are posting to your page is becoming a fine art. But it is doable. It is also true that paying for Facebook ads will remain a sure fire way to increase exposure. If all of this is beyond your ability to manage because of time restraints, you can call on us at DISRUPT Media to help. Let DISRUPT Media craft a Facebook strategy tailored to your needs using our exclusive four part FUNERAL Social Design Process. Our process is what enables DISRUPT Media to claim that we are the funeral profession’s only full service social media provider. Our clients who are a part of our FUNERAL Social Design Process are seeing an increase in post reach and engagement of over 300%. Go to http://funeralsocial.com to find out more about the services we offer.