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Facebook Organic Reach still Achievable

December 19, 2014Anthony

If my memory serves me correctly, in roughly the spring of 2014 Facebook changed their algorithm. Well, they change their algorithm it seems like once a quarter, so last spring is what I am going with. As we have all witnessed and read, Facebook’s algorithm chnaged drastically that only 1 – 2% of your brand’s likes will see your posts. In this Blog post, I am going to discuss on the Facebook Organic Reach is still attainable and how one of my brand’s posts did it.

I believe that if you build the right Facebook audience you can achieve more than the 2% organic reach. The right audience is key. Remember, what works for me may not work for you and your brand. Facebook has good analytics, so be sure to utilize those and they will help you with feature postings. On our page we currently have 29,700 likes, which isn’t a whole lot when compared to the bigger brands. Each day, I try to reach 2,000+ people organically with our posts. If my math is correct, that is about 8% of our total likes. Not a whole lot in the grand scheme of things.

I started out the first week of December with this post about a Lake County restaurant being featured as 1 of the 17 best burgers in Enjoy Illinois by Thrillist. I knew going in, that these types of posts typically do well. I was expecting this post to organically reach anywhere between 5 – 6k people. I did not expect it to hit 13,400 organically, with 148 likes, 10 comments and 113 shares. People like food, they love trying new places to it if the restaurant is highly rated, so overall, this was a solid post from the start. I made sure to tag our local restaurant, the state of Illinois Tourism, Enjoy Illinois and put the link in the status. I also made sure the photo showed up as a link as well, so people could click on the link in the status or the picture to be taken to the article. People then started tagging other people in the comments.

The next day, I thought I could have a high organic reach day again with a post about Ravinia Festival announcing it’s first performance of next summer of Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga. In the past Ravinia posts have a done ok, nothing to write home about. The post did not do as well as I thought it would have.

Then came Wednesday. From my website Google Analytics and my Social Media stats I know that Wednesday starts the include of people looking at our site and researching things to do for the upcoming weekend. That upcoming weekend, there was the Canadian Pacific Holiday Train coming through the area. I was excited about it personally because my 2 1/2 year old son is into trains and we had went the previous year. With this event being on a Sunday, I knew it would attract a good crowd. So I found an engaging picture of the holiday train and a made a post that tagged the Canadian Pacific Holiday Train page, the Gurnee Park District page where the train would be arriving and put a link in the status to the event description on our website. What then happened, was something that I never imaged would happen for me. 212 likes, 36 comments, 347 shares and 23,912 people reached organically. The posts reach kept growing each day through Sunday. People where tagging people in the comments and the shares continued to rise. I had hit a sweet spot with this post with my Facebook audience.

The next step now is to look at the analytics, see why this post did so well, figure out what my audience wants and try to recreate it. I am a digital marketer for a family tourism destination, so my audience wants unique family events. Things that you can not do every day and something the entire family can enjoy.

What I have realized is that this type of reach is achievable no matter the size of you Facebook page, as long as you have the right audience. Also, lucky for me, I do have some Social Media Ambassadors who do consistently like and share my posts, so that did with this specific one. By giving your audience the right content that they are looking for and properly timing the information, a post can successfully reach a large amount of people organically.

Lake County Social Media Marketing Event #LCSN

March 31, 2014Anthony

I have not been good at keeping this going but I thought with all of the buzz from my Social Media Networking event this past Thursday, there is no better time than the present to give this another try. As, some of you already know, I am the Marketing Manager at Visit Lake County, and I handle everything from Advertising, Website development, Public Relations, Marketing, Technology and Social, so all thoughts expressed here are my own and not representative of Visit Lake County in any way.

Urban Edge in Downtown Waukegan by Casey Karl

This past Thursday, I held a Social Media Networking event at Urban Edge in Downtown Waukegan and it was a HUGE success!! People are still buzzing about it a couple days later. This all started a few months ago when I was looking around on my brand’s Facebook page at what the community was posting and talking about. I quickly realized that there was a lack of knowledge with small businesses within the community with what to post on Facebook. So, I pitched an idea to my boss about Visit Lake County getting behind a Social Networking Event, where we would educate our partners, bring in area small businesses and the former Lake County Social Networking Group. Once she was on board, I set out to locate the venue, and I immediately thought of no better place than Urban Edge in Downtown Waukegan. They built their gallery and ArtWauk on Social Media, plus Waukegan has a very vibrant community that I could tap into. The next step was the easy one….finding panelists/speakers. I went to my contacts in the Lake County Social Networking community and targeted 4 of the top Social Media enthusiasts that I know and who brings a following with them. They were (in no specific order), Casey Karl, Eddie Soto, Heather Acton and Beth Rosen (unfortunately Beth was out of the country and could not attend but was on board with what I was trying to do). It was a resounding “YES, Anthony, what do you need me to do. Thank you for spearheading this!” I started to feel the excitement and saw some buzz happening online before the event.

Social Media Marketing panelists, from left to right, Casey Karl, Heather Acton, Anthony Haag, Eddie Soto

We decided the first session would be solely about the Social Network “Facebook” and how small businesses can utilize the network to promote their business. It was pretty easy to decided the format of the event, as Tim McDonald (now with the Huffington Post and living in the Big Apple, New York) did a create job with Lake County Social Networking #LCSN when he was in Lake County. I did touch base with Tim during the planning stages to get his thoughts. I learn something new every time I chat with Tim. For me, when Tim speaks, I say nothing and immediately turn into a sponge as I want to soak up everything he has to say. He is literally one of the best community managers that I know!! I was not trying to recreate what Tim did or duplicate it, I just wanted to bring the band back together so to speak. Talking with the speakers, I decided there would be no powerpoint presentations, just the 3 Social Media Enthusiasts (do not like to use the words Social Media Experts, no such thing, just people who know more than the average bear) and myself sitting on a couch talking about Facebook with interaction from the audience, similar to a talk show format. I did my best Maury interpretation.

I started it off with, “Is Facebook still King of the Social World?” The answer for all 4 us was a resounding “Yes”, but don’t put all your eggs in the Facebook basket. Yes, brand reach is down but the people are still there and they will find you with great content. Content is still KING!! Facebook is just part of the your arsenal that should include, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, Google+ and YouTube. We then continued on to talking about ROI and how you should have Social Media goals for each platform first and than ROI. We then answered audience questions that ranged from very basic, “How do I set up a Facebook page?” to more sophisticated, “Where is Facebook heading and how do quantify it?”. We also gave one tip for small businesses managing their own Social Media, and that is to, Listen! Listen to what people are talking about on the networks and what your audience wants and then deliver.

Panelists, Casey Karl, Heather Action, Eddie Soto, Anthony Haag and Urban Edge's David Motley. Photo by Alex Maegdlin — Panelists, Casey Karl, Heather Action, Eddie Soto, Anthony Haag and Urban Edge’s David Motley. Photo by Alex Maegdlin

Overall, 54 people were in attendance in the first installment of the second coming of Lake County Social Networking events. What lies ahead with the idea? Well, as soon as the event ended attendees were asking when the next one would be. After initially talking with a few folks, I am thinking having the Social Media Networking events once a quarter, but we shall see. If you attended the event what did you think about? What are your thoughts on Facebook? Do you think it is still the Social Media king?

The crowd at Urban Edge to Lake County Social Media Event. Photo by Urban Edge

How much time do you spend on Social Media Marketing?

February 11, 2013Anthony

Alright, it is time that I get back to blogging outside of work. Why, you ask? Well, a lot has been going on and I feel that can use these medium to express my thoughts and hopefully teach others about the world of Social Media Marketing and learn something as well. Plus, I have a lot of topics on mind. I was giving a Social Media presentation to our partners at work on Friday and I was asked the question, how much time should you spend on Social Media? That question was immediately followed up with; we want to get on Twitter but have been told that it will take a lot of time monitoring. We will get into why you have not been doing Social Media in a later post, so we will only be focusing on the question of how much time should be spent on Social Media.

At work, we are a small office where everyone wears multiple hats and we have a wide spread Social Media program that includes, blogging, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Flickr, Pinterest, Google + and Instagram. So for me at work, to run an effective Social Media campaign a minimum of 4 hours a day is needed. In my mind, that is on the low end. I know that each company and industry are different and that time will vary depending on what your Social Media Campaign includes. Some companies will even have a dedicated Social Media specialist doing this full time.

Now, back to question, that I was asked, how much time do you spend on Twitter? I believe that Twitter alone can be done in less time. There are programs that allow you to set-up keywords, and offer great analytics and they are Hootsuite, TweetDeck, Sprout Social and there are others. In full disclosure, I am a Hootsuite fan.

I answered the question, by saying that you can do Twitter in an hour to an hour an a half a day, but yes you have to monitor throughout the day. Hootsuite is a great program to let you do this and it allows you to link it to Twitter, Facebook, etc. I recommended doing some research before hand to see what your customers are talking about and what your competitors are doing. I would follow your competitors, set up your keywords to what others are talking about and join the conversation. People don’t just want to hear about you, they want specials / deals and want to feel like they are communicating with someone. Twitter is about sharing and listening to what others have to say. Brands should have a human voice behind it as well and not just advertising. Hootsuite is free and is a web based program. You can check-in to see what people are saying in the morning, schedule your tweets, reply to people and check your keyword columns. Then leave the program up on your desktop all day and check it every half hour or so. We can get into when to post and what times work best in another blog post, but after 5pm you still have to monitor it. Remember, just because the work day ends at 5, Social Media does not.

How much time do you spend on Social Media a day? If you were only doing Twitter and nothing else how much time would you spend on it?

Does your company have a Social Media Strategy in place?

August 18, 2011September 25, 2016Anthony

I was honored to speak a few weeks back, at a Chamber of Commerce event on Social Media Marketing. The audience was small business owners and marketing and public relations professionals looking at incorporating Social Media into their marketing plans. What I found interesting was how many people were using Facebook and Twitter, but they were not tracking their online activity or did not have a Social Media strategy incorporated in their marketing plan.

The first thing that I tell business owners and marketing professionals is to make sure they have their Facebook page set-up as a business page and not as a personnel page. I still still a lot of business who have it set-up improperly and it is a pet peeve of mine. I cringe every time I see a person become friends with a business on Facebook instead of “liking” them.