3 ways to increase the reach of your Facebook post

If your Facebook posts are lacking in reach and engagement, there are a few ways to improve their performance. These are really easy and convenient methods provided through Facebook itself, and can be as cheap as you can afford.
Target your posts (free) 
Facebook gives you the option to aim posts at specific groups of people. It seems counterintuitive that you’d only want a certain demographic of your fans to engage with a post. However, targeted posts can come in handy for a number of situations, such as when:

• You’re acknowledging a national holiday. In this case, you’d be posting to people from a specific country.
• It’s International Women’s Day and you’re offering a discount to all your female fans.
• You’re providing free Spanish to English translations, so you need to reach Spanish speakers.
• You sell sneakers and you want to advertise them to runners and tennis players.

Targeted posts also ensure that you reach relevant audiences – people who are more likely to be interested in your post (and consequently less likely to unfollow or unlike your page when they see a post).

To target an individual post:

1. Go to your page and create a new post (without publishing yet).
2. Then click on the target icon (bottom left), and then ‘Select Targeting’.
3. Now you can target according to gender, relationships status, educational status, age, location, language, and interests. You can select more than one category but note that the more you choose, the fewer the number of fans you’ll reach (the number is indicated on the bottom right).
4. Finally, click post.

Boost certain content (paid) 
You could publish a great post at the wrong time of day, and it would reach only a few people and receive little engagement, simply because it would get lost amongst the countless other news feed posts.
By boosting an important post, it’s guaranteed that the visibility of your content increases – reaching more of your fans and even people who aren’t following your page. This can improve your click-through rate and help you reach more audiences.

What to do:

1. Go to the post that you want to boost.
2. Click the ‘Boost Post’ button at the bottom-right corner of the post.
3. Now you have several options, from specifying who your potential audience is, to the budget, to the duration of the boosted post. You can see how the post will look on the left-hand side of the window.
4. When you’ve selected the conditions, click ‘Boost’ on the bottom-right.

*Note: The boost option is only available to pages with 50 or more likes.
Create ads for promotions (paid) 
Small business owners might be hesitant to spend money on social media marketing, but you can spend as little as $1 per day, and it can be very useful when you want to advertise special deals, discounts, and contests. These can lead to new customers, more fans (and more targeted, engaged audiences), as well as increased sales.

1. To create an ad, go to https://www.facebook.com/ads/create
2. Decide on the aim of your ad campaign, e.g. do you want to direct people to your website, increase the attendance of an event, or just promote your page?
3. Now you have a number of options, from targeting demographics to budget, schedule and design.
4. Place your order and review the ad’s performance via the Ads Manager.

It’s important to include a link to your website in the ad, and carefully word it to encourage a user to take action.

*Note: You can create an ad even if you haven’t posted anything to your page.
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And there you go! Have you tried ads or boosted posts, and have they worked for you? Let us know in the comments.