Facebook's organic reach has been on a steady decline in recent times? But does that mean it's the end of the line for organic reach and you need to reach into your wallet to ensure your Posts gets in front of your audience?

Firstly, what is the definition of 'organic reach'? It's the number of people who have seen your content without paid distribution, including people who are shown your Posts as well as your Facebook Page.

On the flip side, paid reach means people who see your content through your ads and is influenced by your audience targeting and might also increase your organic reach.

Confused? It all boils down to Engagement. If your content is engaging, users will be more inclined to click on the Share button and that increases your organic reach but sometimes you do require paid reach to ensure your Post gets the necessary traction to garner engagement or the viral factor.

One of the reasons why Facebook's organic reach is declining has to do with the sheer number of content that is being published on a daily basis. There is easily over 30 billion pieces of content every month! The other reason is also due to Facebook's algorithm that only serves content that is relevant to the user's interests.

With such a scenario in place, can businesses still succeed by relying on organic reach alone? Definitely. But it won't be an easy task. However, once you understand how to build your strategy, it will be a valuble tool you have over your competitors.

So, what can businesses do?

You probably know the answer already. It's all about content, engagement, and your user. Most businesses make the same mistake of thinking about their own business only, and self promotion Posts make the bulk of their content. Guess what? Your users HATE this type of content, that is why you are not getting the engagement you're hoping for.

So, HOW do you build engagement with your audience? Firstly, you need to identify the audience persona that you want to target. Is your business targeted at baby boomers? Millenials? Career women? College students? What about their interests? Profession?

Build your reputation and authority

You need to provide value and information to your users without thinking about your 'sales' initially. If you think that every Post you put out will garner you 'x' amount of sales, you are definitely using the wrong approach here.

Do you have a blog? Or tips that can benefit people? Perhaps offer an 'insider view' of your industry.

You need to be consistent with your message, vibe and overall tone. You want to attract the correct audience too. Would you rather have 10,000 random fans that are not interested with your Posts or 2,000 engaged audience?

There is a FREE tool within Facebook that you can make use of to get more Likes from your target audience. When you have a Post that has some engamement, you can click on the people that have liked/reacted to your Post and invite them to Like your Page. These are the people that will be more likely to engage with your Page in future since they have shown their interest in your Post. But don't expect everyone you invite to accept. Treat this as a bonus.

Do you have other social media platforms? It's a great idea to cross promote your content across the different platforms so that you can drive traffic across different platforms. You can customise your content to cater to each platform yet keep the message consistent for your brand.

It can be very stressful to keep coming up with new content on a daily basis, so it's a great idea to create evergreen content that you can use and reuse for the long term. Or you could also curate content from other websites to share with your users.

Some examples would be:

As you can see, there is still an opportunity to make use of organic reach to build your Page's engagement without spending anything but in the long run, you will still need to allocate some budget towards Promoted Posts (NOT Boost Post) to ensure your message gets spread to the right audience.