Submitted by Haley Marketing

As technology improves and social media becomes even more integrated in our everyday lives, we must evolve with it and find new ways to target our audience. Organic reach is an essential component for success in using social media. Organic reach is simply the number of people your content reaches without paid distribution.

So, how do you gain more organic reach for your social media posts? Here are a few ideas. 

Think About Your End Goal

You may roll your eyes because it seems we always start with this phrase, but it’s the most important. If you don’t know what you want out of a post, you can’t put the right strategies in place; and in the end, no matter how much organic reach you’re getting, if you’re not targeting a specific goal, your efforts may be for nothing.

Do you need more applications, leads or followers?

Gaining followers can be a slippery slope because you want more eyeballs on your posts, but you need to be strategic. A follow or like doesn’t convert for your business … at least not instantaneously. So, if you’re looking to gain followers, be practical. Just because someone likes your post doesn’t mean they want a job. Just as if you add an item to your cart, it doesn’t necessarily mean you need to buy it.

If you’re gaining followers to your pages, focus on the long-term impact of these followers. It’s as easy to unfollow as it is to follow someone, so you want to build a strategy to keep their attention long term.

Utilize Engagement Currencies

Whether it’s Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram or Twitter – these platforms contain important algorithms when it comes to engagement. A simple like or comment can not only boost your post to the top of your audience’s news feeds, it can also spread your organic reach to audiences outside of your page likes.

Are you capitalizing on this?

Develop Persuasive Content

As a society, we live life in the fast lane. Once we have an idea, we tend to want it created, developed, posted, and converted on as quickly as possible. And honestly, that’s OK – it’s human nature. But what I think is important here is to not take any short cuts.

Instead of posting a caption as quickly as possible, take time to think about what you’re posting. Does the job have great benefits? TELL THEM. Does the job offer a bonus? TELL THEM. What hours are they working? TELL THEM.

Don’t hide the juicy parts of the job in the job description. When posting to social media, make these points noticeable.

Involve Your Community With Engaging CTAs

As mentioned, likes, comments and shares are valuable internet currencies, so maximize opportunities for these to happen:

Run a contest

People love free stuff. Whether it’s a gift card or tickets to a sporting event, adding an incentive can help drive organic reach.

But not too fast – think of your end goal. Specifically, contests are great for gaining long-term audiences because you can add fine print in order for someone to enter. In your copy, I’d encourage you to have people like the page and the post, and also comment and share it. All these things take maybe two minutes to do, but they offer real benefits for your firm:

• Like the page – now, you are capturing their attention long term.
• Like and comment on the post – using those valuable currencies to boost the post.
• Share the post – through this, you’re getting your audience to help you do the work because now their audience has their eyes on your post.

Of course, thinking about conversions, I recommend including a link back to your company website in the social media post. You can then go in and track how much organic traffic your website received and what they did.

Encourage interaction

Again, capitalize on the audience you already have. Through persuasive copy, encourage job seekers and employers to interact with your posts. For example, if you have a job posting on social media, ask your audience to tag or share the post with their friends. After all, even if your audience isn’t interested in the content at the time, that doesn’t mean they don’t know someone who would be interested.

The night shift might not be for everyone, but Sally could have a friend who likes to be at home with her kids. If Sally sees your posts, maybe she’ll tag or share with her friend.

In a world of sponsored posts, organic reach is not dead. For more information on improving your organic reach, check out this episode of InSights.