The No B.S. Guide to Growing Your Facebook Reach Organically in 2019

Psst – I’m going to let you in on a little secret. Facebook marketing isn’t dead.

Gasp.

You’ve probably heard a lot of doom and gloom recently about Facebook’s prospects. Ominous “facts” about the younger generation shrinking on the platform, and an increasingly inactive user base.

You might even be forgiven to think that Facebook is going down the way of a particularly famous MyPredecessor.

Well, don’t sweat it – as always, the press is just doing their job, and the reality couldn’t be further from the truth.

Nearly 3 billion people are using Facebook as of a few months ago – that’s almost half our global population. And while activity in North America has certainly seen some shrinkage in the last few years, it’s little more than a pittance – especially considering nearly 90% of Facebook’s user base is outside of North America.

So, no – Facebook marketing isn’t going anywhere. Especially when you consider how deeply coupled Instagram is to Facebook – and let’s face it, with the precipitous decline of Snap, Instagram is the king of social.

So, now that we’ve dealt with the doom and gloom nonsense, let’s get to the meat of this article: how do you (organically) grow your Facebook marketing presence in 2019?

As it turns out, the strategies that worked a few years ago don’t seem to hold as well nowadays. Let’s find out why, and what you can do instead.

The Problem: Declining Reach

The average organic reach of a brand on Facebook has precipitously declined in the last few years – in fact, it’s dropped nearly 200% in the last 2-3 years. The tinfoil-hatted among us will of course quickly point to Facebook’s supposed lowering engagement (see: doom-and-gloom myth-busting above), or the more cynical crowd might suggest Facebook is throttling organic in favor of paid promotions.

Neither of these appear to be the case.

[ Image Source: https://unsplash.com/photos/tnxRFtXI9dI ]

As I’ve described already, Facebook’s “per-capita activity” may be seeing slight shrinkage, but it’s volumes continue to rise. And the conspiracy of Facebook’s shift towards paid, well….although something similar is probably happening, there certainly isn’t any objective proof you can point to.

The answer, as our old friend Occam would probably be fond of, is much simpler than either of those: there’s just a lot more competition. There are tens of millions of business pages competing for space on Facebook – that’s an order of magnitude more than it was just 5 years ago.

So the “problem” of the old techniques isn’t in the techniques at all – it’s just in execution. If you want to stand out from the field and make organic work, you just have to be better.

Rough, I know.

Unconventional Ideas Win Facebook Marketing

[ Image Source: https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1532700918736-e42b0e45d39e?ixlib=rb-1.2.1&q=85&fm=jpg&crop=entropy&cs=srgb&dl=ali-yahya-755909-unsplash.jpg ]

Social media is an incredibly young discipline, yet most organizations treat it like its the study of arithmetic. The “rules” that you’re taught were barely invented 4 years ago – it’s crucial in this day and age to start breaking them.

For starters, one of the biggest mistakes companies make is focusing on ancient demographic personas. If you’re constantly chasing the same demographics that your organization has been chasing for decades, just now doing it online, how can you expect to stand out from the field?

In fact – it’s becoming increasingly clear that the access granted by social media is opening up brands to demographics they didn’t even know they had.

Consider the 2015 super bowl, one of the most memorable in recent history. Guess what the top 3 most engaged demographics on Facebook were for the event?

1. Women, ages 25-34
2. Women, ages 35-44
3. Women, ages 18-24

Surprised?

So while 99% of companies did what they always do, and marketed their Superbowl social presence towards middle-aged men, the smartest brands went after young women and scored big.

Here’s another example: peak times.

For ages, the common convention has been to post during peak hours. It’s an idea that’s a relic of the advertising age – after all, you wouldn’t want to run TV ads on the 2 am slot, right?

Well, as it turns out, the same idea doesn’t really hold on social media. Part of it is just sheer volume – the 2 am social media volume is bigger than even primetime TV, and the “peak hours” on social media are so ridiculously competitive it’s nearly impossible to find a niche

Consider Jon Loomer (Facebook master extraordinaire) results from an experiment posting in peak hours vs. the midnight shift:

Brands that learn to play risky (and hire people that are good at taking those risks… I’m looking at you, Subway), tend to win out. Consider the rise of brand-on-brand violence on social media – these oddly satisfying & transparent tweets against competitors generate some of the most social engagement on the internet:

The rules for social media are still in their infancy. If you’re following the same rules as everyone else, how can you expect to get different results?

Something something insanity, yadda yadda.

Social media scheduling is king

There was a weird lull the last few years where it seemed people were starting to sour on social media scheduling tools. A bigger push was made towards higher-quality, bespoke content and getting away from “automation” because it “didn’t work”.

There are 2 salient points we need to make here:

• Social media automation doesn’t mean avoiding high-quality content…. It simply frees you of the time required to organize & share the more rudimentary day-to-day content, so you can focus on the killer stuff (like Superbowl memes!)
• Quantity matters – now more than ever

Gone are the days where a few posts a week are enough to keep the tides moving. Now more than ever you need a constant flow of contact to keep engagement levels up – the average post is visible on the social sphere for a matter of minutes. It’s like swimming – you have to keep pedaling, or you’ll sink.

(Or, some other less morbid analogy)

[ Image Source: https://buffer.com/resources/facebook-marketing-strategy#page-posting ]

According to the numbers, you should be posting 5-10 times a day to maximize engagement on your accounts. And here’s the kicker: that number is increasing every quarter. Seriously.

I know it sounds awful, but you really need to throw a lot of things at the wall for anything to stick. That’s the nature of social media nowadays – it’s a giant sea of noise, and only little bits and pieces will crack their way in.

So, in 2019 what scheduler should you be using to maximize your throughput? Well, you’ve got a few options.

1. Buffer – Ye old reliable. Buffer hasn’t added much in the last few years, mostly because they haven’t had to – they continue to be the leading choice for a simple scheduler, without the frills and fuss. It’s occasionally harder to get the volumes you need on Buffer, simply because there’s a fair bit of manual work included in the scheduling – however, it’s hard to beat Buffer in terms of user experience and reliability. 
2. CoSchedule – CoSchedule has become quite popular in the last few years, for good reason. It’s probably the best choice in the menu if you’re looking for a place to run all of your content through – the scheduling part of it is a rather small aspect. So, you won’t necessarily get the control you need to maximize social, but you’ll get a bird’s eye view and control of everything in one deck. 
3. Drumup – It’s a bit of a shameless plug, but hey, we wouldn’t be in business if we didn’t exist on this list. DrumUp is your best option on the list to hit the volumes above because of it’s repeating scheduler and general automation tools. If you’re looking to set-and-forget it’s definitely the best option on the list, particularly if you’re looking to automate the content creation bit (which we’d recommend – it’s always better when content and social are nice and synchronized)

Facebook Marketing in 2019: Not For The Faint Hearted

The challenge of Facebook marketing is not that it’s becoming more competitive, or that it requires that extra touch – it’s because it’s so damn tantalizing.

For all it’s faults, Facebook continues to be the entry point for audiences engaging with and buying brands – particularly brick and mortar ones. It’s still essential to maintain a strong presence, and the rewards are unthinkable for those who actually crack it – the ceiling of high Facebook engagement is still much higher than Twitter or Instagram.

The key to organic Facebook marketing always boils down to what nobody wants to hear – the fundamentals. The fact is, there aren’t any tricks or hacks that’ll get you to organic growth. You need to make a lot of great posts, understand your audience and respond to them, and really deliver on quality.

Easy, right? Get to work.

[ Image Source: https://unsplash.com/photos/OwvRB-M3GwE ]
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Instagram Dominates Twitter! How to Use Instagram for Business

 If you're tackling the social media arena as a part of your business strategy, you've probably set out on Facebook and Twitter, and possibly either Google+ or Pinterest. Sound familiar? It's just the way it's been done across the board thus far. 

I'm going to cut right to the chase, and make some hefty claims. Instagram has surpassed Twitter, and the way it's growing, it looks to have its eye on global social media domination. It's getting to the point where you almost have to feel foolish if you aren't using it for your business. 

Hashtags are social megaphones, great for extending exposure. But everyone knows that spamming them on Twitter just leads to less engagement, which is what you should really be after. I'm going to show you how Instagram allows for more exposure without having to sacrifice engagement.

This will be important for all marketers, but if your niche values a younger audience in any way, this is especially important for you!

Part One: WHY Should I Use Instagram for Business?

I'm going to run you through some of the top reasons for why you'd want to Instagram for business. Then, in part two of this post, I'll cover the how of tackling this social arena. 

1. Instagram Surpasses Twitter in User Count

Instagram claims 300 million users while Twitter sits on 288 million. The extreme growth rate of Instagram can't be ignored! 

First things first: The basic user numbers. If you look at the stats that the social networks themselves put out, Instagram has reached 300 million users, while Twitter claims 288 million. 

Monthly users is one thing, but social media moves so much faster than that. So what about users who are active daily? Gregory Ferenstein of VentureBeat has shown in a recent study that Instagram has indeed surpassed Twitter with the percentage of American users that are active daily. 

In fact, only Facebook beats out Instagram for daily users:

I know that 10 percent of Americans using Instagram daily might not seem like a high percentage, and Twitter's 7 percent might not seem like much of a difference, but when you consider how many hundreds of millions of people live in America, these are some weighty numbers to consider! And that's just America, think of all the other Instagram users worldwide. 

In a nutshell? There's a lot of people on Instagram, just waiting for you. Every. Single. Day.

2. It's Not Just User Count: Engagement is Higher Too

On Twitter, any more than 1-2 hashtags per tweet means a drop in engagement. On Instagram, more hashtags usually mean more engagement.

Hashtags are more than just a (somewhat silly sounding) trending phrase, "Hashtag OMG!" They're a way of reaching a much larger audience with a topical post. You don't have to be friends with thousands of people in order for them to see your updates. You just have to add a popular hashtag.

Here's the thought process I went through when considering hashtags...

1. Hashtags show all the people interested in that topic what you've posted.
2. What a great way to spread reach for my posts! I'll use ALL THE HASHTAGS ON TWITTER!
3. People on Twitter don't respond to posts that are spammed with hashtags. I can only use 1-2 per Tweet.
4. My reach feels so limited. If only there was a way I could use lots of hashtags AND increase engagement. 
5. Instagram comes along, and is all: "You can do that here, you know..."
6. #MindBlown

Want some proof? A graph in a post on Buffer by Kevan Lee really shows that "the more the merrier" attitude towards hashtags on Instagram will indeed get you further.

1-2 hashtags? Try 30.

Kevan Lee: "His finding is quite interesting: The more hashtags you use, the more likes your photo will get."

3. Instagram is the Best Network for Reaching a Younger Audience

If any part of your target market is within the 18-29 age group, then Instagram is the best social media choice for you. An interesting post by 19-year-old Andrew Watts, "A Teenager’s View on Social Media, Written by an actual teen" really depicts the social climate for a younger audience:

This point is reinforced by a study done by Business Insider. In this chart, you can see the incredible downward slope of Facebook with US teens, the half-hearted rise and fall of Twitter, and the epic popularity growth of Instagram.

Going forward into the future of social media marketing, this is your audience. The up-and-coming generation is set on Instagram. 

I'd just like to say, this doesn't mean that there aren't people older than 29 on Instagram. It's just that you're most likely to find a solid audience in that age group.

Part Two: HOW to Use Instagram for Business

As with any content or social media guide, your audience is the focus at all times. If you can't give them what they're looking for, they won't look for you.

1. Assess Whether Instagram is Best for Your Brand

When you think about the target market for your brand and the general audience of Instagram, is there any crossover?

You need to think about the compatibility between your website and the user base of Instagram. It could be helpful to ask yourself these questions...

• What do I know about my average site visitor?
• Are they generally older than 30? Or do I have at least some success with people in their 20's or even teens?
• What products do I promote? Are there many images on Instagram based on that type of topic?
• Do my competitors use Instagram? (More on this in the next section!)

If your audience is distinctively over 30, then Instagram might not be worth targeting. You can save time and effort with that tidbit alone. Go to another social network instead.

If, however, you have any audience in their 20s or even teens, then this social environment could very well be important to your brand. Age isn't everything, though! As this is a home of visual media (as opposed to text updates) there are certain niches that thrive more than others. 

A good example of this can be seen in the statistics on Brandwatch. It seems that Instagram is great for fitness sites with a male-majority audience, and also for cosmetics with a female-majority audience.

Once again, that's not to say that these are the only niches that it's good for. You'll have to think about your website audience specifically to figure out whether Instagram is the best for you.

2. Study What Your Competitors are Doing

If your competitors are on Instagram, what do their posts look like? This could be a good place to start planning your own social content.

Studying your competitors on Instagram will give you a fairly good indication of the type of content that's trending in your niche. When I asked freelance writer and social media expert Kristi Hines about the most important element for anyone wanting to use Instagram for business, this point was the focus. 

"The best thing to do when starting out on an Instagram marketing campaign is to see what your competitors are doing first.

After visiting a few of your competitors' profiles, you'll get a good sense for the types of images and videos that get the best response from your target audience.

You'll also see if they use branded hashtags, contests, and other strategies to engage their audience.

I'd also highly recommend a tool called Rival IQ.

It will allow you to quickly research the best your competitors have to offer on Instagram (and other social platforms)."

- Kristi Hines, Freelance Writer

So that's definitely worth looking into. See what your competitors are posting, figure out how effective that reach would be for you, and think about how difficult it would be to create similar media. If it seems worth it, why not give it a go?

3. Try Posting. Measure Success. Adjust Tactics. Rinse and Repeat.

Yep, trial and error. Once you've got an idea of what you're competitors are doing, it's the only way to set out with your own content.

Start small, and try one or two things. Build a list of trending hashtags in your niche (ones your competitors commonly use or similar that have a large following), and then create a couple of images or an easy-to-make short video that target those hashtags. Put them out there, see how it goes. 

There are a lot of tools you can use to track the success of your Instagram campaign, such as Iconosquare. 

Try one that appeals to you, and use it to figure out what works well, and what you could ditch without loss.

I'd love to know: Do you use Instagram for business? Have you found it useful in your niche? Comment below if you do, or if you would like to know if anyone else in your niche has found it to be successful.

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What’s the Ideal Social Media Post Length?

Social media post length is a definitive factor is deciding the impact of your social media content on its viewers. Any post that is wordsmithed to fit character limits will fully display your social media content to your fans, without obscuring any information. And that is integral to earning social media engagement. With the knowledge of ideal post lengths (mentioned below) and a reliable social media management tool, you can post optimized social media posts consistently.

This blog post is a curation of research concerning post length on various social networks. Let’s begin with the biggest and most popular social media platform – Facebook.

Note – This post discusses 2 numbers –
1. The ideal length of social media posts (recommended for optimum engagement), and
2. The maximum character limits that different social platforms allow
 

The ideal Facebook post length

There are different types of posts that you can publish on Facebook – organic, paid and video. Each of those types has its own layout on Facebook and ideal post length. Here’s a short summary of posts types and their optimal lengths.

Organic posts – Between 40 and 80 characters. According to MarketingProfs, Facebook posts that are under 40 characters get 86% engagement. Jeff Bullas corroborates that research but extends the ideal character limit by stating that Facebook posts with 80 characters or less get 88% more engagement.

Paid posts – Paid posts can be broken down into a headline, a body and a link description. Here are the ideal lengths for each of those elements, according to an Adespresso study.

Ideal length of Facebook ads

• Headline – 5 words
• Text – 14 words
• Link description – 18 words

Facebook paid posts are about taking action, which is why it’s natural for copywriters to craft shorter headlines and descriptions. However, you should pay attention to copy on organic posts as well, keeping them crisp and action-prompting where possible.

If you’d like to learn more about copywriting for social media posts, here’s a useful read – 3 Secrets of Top Copywriters That Can Transform Your Content Marketing.

Facebook Character Limits or Maximum Character Lengths

If you wished to, you could publish a Facebook status that was 63,206 characters long! But that length is far from ideal. Here are a few other maximum character lengths that are noteworthy.

• Facebook username character limit – 50 characters
• Facebook Page Description – 155 Characters
• Facebook Comments – 8,000 Characters

Facebook image ads –

• Headline – 40 characters
• Text – 90 characters
• Link description – 20 characters

Facebook canvas ads –

• Text – 500 characters
• Button Text – 30 characters

Facebook lead generation ads –

• Context card headline – 45 characters
• Benefits text – 5 bullets with 80 characters each
• Button text – 25 characters
• Custom question text – 50 characters
• Privacy policy link text – 100 characters
• Custom disclaimer title – 60 characters

Facebook collection ads –

• Headline – 25 characters

The ideal length of Facebook Videos 

Facebook support video upload of upto 120 minutes, but it’s advisable to steer clear from publishing anything that long unless it’s a Facebook exclusive feature film. 44% of 30-60 sec videos are viewed completely, according to a study conducted by Kinetic Social. Plus, 33% Facebook users prefer shorter videos that are between 30-50 secs long.

The ideal length of Facebook video ads –

• Text – 90 characters
• Headline – 25 characters
• Link description – 30 characters

 

The ideal Twitter post length

In 2017, Twitter increase the character limit of tweets to 280 characters. Since then, Twitterati have become more active on the social network claims product manager Aliza Rosen. This is probably because 280 characters allows more room for Twitter users to share their thoughts. But this added space doesn’t mean that other Twitter users want to see longer tweets.

According to a study conducted by Buddy Media, the ideal tweet is less than a 100 characters long. The study finds that such tweets receive 17% more engagement. So yet again, shorter content is better received by social media users. This is partly because shorter tweets are easier to read and comprehend, but also because shorter tweets give retweeters extra room to add their thoughts.

The ideal hashtag length

According to Vanessa Doctor from hashtag.org, hashtags that are 6 characters or one word long perform better. Once again, comprehension is the concern. Hashtags don’t allow spaces and exceptionally long hashtags are hard to read and comprehend.

Twitter character limits or maximum character length for Twitter posts

• Tweets – 280 characters
• DMs (Direct Messages) – 10,000 characters
• Handle – 15 characters
• Profile name – 20 characters

In short, concise content performs better on Twitter. Note that the character limits for Twitter have been extended to allow more content, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that longform content will ever be well received on the microblogging social network.

The ideal LinkedIn post length

At 500 million users and 10 million job postings, LinkedIn is a fairly noisy social media platform. As the social network grows its user base, social media marketers will find it tougher to earn organic attention via LinkedIn posts. Marketers should continue to optimize the quality, timing and delivery of LinkedIn posts so they can make the most of their brand’s LinkedIn presence.

There isn’t much research on ideal length of LinkedIn posts, so we have to rely on how posts appear on LinkedIn to decide ideal post length. For instance, if your LinkedIn status update is longer than a 100 characters, the excess text gets cut off and a Show More button appears. So it makes sense to keep your LinkedIn status updates under a 100 characters or 25 words.

• LinkedIn status update – 50-100 characters ( organic and paid)
• LinkedIn post titles – 40-49 characters (according to OkDork)
• Number of images – 8 (Source – OkDork)
• LinkedIn articles – 1900 to 2000 words (Source – OkDork)
• Article subheads – 5 per post (Source – OkDork)
• LinkedIn videos – under 30 seconds (Source – LinkedIn)

LinkedIn character limits or maximum character length for LinkedIn posts

• LinkedIn Publishing post headline – 150 characters
• LinkedIn Publishing content length ~ 120,000 characters *
• Company update – 700 characters
• Company name – 100 characters
• About us (Summary) – 2,000 characters
• Page name – 50 characters
• Company leaders headline – 150 characters
• Company leaders description – 150 characters
• Employee testimonials – 400 characters
• Custom module title – 150 characters
• Custom module body – 500 characters
• Custom module URL label – 70 characters
• First name – 20 characters
• Last name – 40 characters
• Recommendation – 3,000 characters

* As per SproutSocial’s experiment, LinkedIn cuts you off once you reach 120,000 characters on LinkedIn articles.

The ideal Instagram post length

Unlike the other social networks on this post, Instagram was built to promote visual content. However, the right combination of words and hashtags can help your Instagram posts maximum engagement, which can earn them the top position on users’ feeds.

• Instagram captions – 138 -150 characters
• Instagram ad captions – 125 characters
• Number of hashtags for captions – 5 -10

However, it’s not a great idea to add irrelevant hashtags to your posts, just to increase its visibility. That may result in your shadowban on the social network. According to TrackMaven, posts with exactly 9 hashtags receive the most engagement.

• Number of characters in a hashtag – 24 or less

If you notice the captions added by top brands on Instagram, you’ll notice that most captions run short. Most captions that perform well also create context, showcase the brand and prompt viewers to take action.

Instagram character limits or maximum character length for Instagram posts

• Instagram caption – 2,200 characters
• Bio – 150 characters
• Username – 30 characters

Wrap

Social media post length is an important factor in deciding your social media engagement. WIth an optimally worded social media post, you can make an impact on your target audience on different social media platforms. Use the info shared on this post to decide what lengths of captions and post descriptions to incorporate in your social media content.

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How to Get More Twitter Followers (Without Creating Content)

Numbers matter. Influencers, current and future customers consider the size of your Twitter following when deciding whether to follow your or not. You probably won’t even consider your own brand a social media success unless you have grown a sizeable following on Twitter. Even though your number of Twitter followers isn’t indicative of the quality of your posts, the number matters. Here are 5 ways you can get more Twitter followers now.

1. Ensure that your brand is follow-worthy

Customers today want to connect with brands. It’s not enough to have a ton of content. Unless you are authentic and exceptional, customers won’t engage with you on Twitter. Millennials, for instance, are very brand-conscious, but they’re very difficult to engage. However, with the right content, partnerships and social outlook, you can catch their attention.

Start building a brand that speaks to your target groups on their level. In their language. And about things that matter to your audience.

2. Curate content from RSS feeds, the web and your resources

Instead of always creating your own content, you can curate content from strategic sources. What are strategic sources? Well, non-competing brands within your industry, customers and partners qualify as strategic sources. You can use this form of interaction to show these people that you are interested and that you care. At the same time, you can also get access to free, high-quality content that you can share with your audience.

You could even automate curation using a content curation app such as DrumUp, which has RSS feed reading and keyword based content curation activities.

3. Craft well-organized automation queues

Once you have curated content, you can save posts in smart social media automation queues to avoid publishing manually. Social media automation queues are great for engagement because they allow you more control over quality of posts and publishing. You can save posts according to themes, dates and partners and set the publishing schedule to match your audience’s content consumption.

DrumUp’s social media management dashboard has “content libraries” using which you can create smart automatic queues.

4. Follow influencers, partners and potential customers

The point of following people on Twitter is to get genuine and active people to engage with your brand. So, it’s not a good idea to follow people at random. Instead, you can create distinct and definite groups of people worth following. Influencers, other brands, customers – current and potential, and event managers can, for instance, be groups of people whom you can follow.

Most social media sites already give you suggestions of people to follow based on your network and interests.

5. Interact with prospects via Twitter lists

When you follow a bunch of people you are left with a cluttered Twitter feed and no way to manage their content. Twitter lists offer you means to organize the people you follow in groups, so you can consciously engage with them on a daily basis. Lists can be made public or kept private based on what you want to do with them. Private lists can’t be seen by other people, including those who are a part of those lists.

Instead of creating your own lists, you can also subscribe to other people’s lists. It’s a good idea to subscribe to lists created by influencers in your niche.

Bonus

Answer questions.

The best way to attract Twitter followers is to become an active part of communities to which they belong. These communities don’t have to be on Twitter. They can be on LinkedIn, Facebook or any other social platform. Participate in conversations on these platforms and answer questions that are important to other participants. This is a great way to both build your credibility and Twitter following.

Wrap

There are tons of ways to build a Twitter following organically. The key is to focus on scaling your results without having to scale your efforts. This post provides examples of great ways to begin.

Photo by Ivana Cajina on Unsplash

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