The ability to use Facebook to promote your business has moved on at such a rate over the past few years that it’s a very different experience nowadays if you are looking to engage with your potential customer base. Almost every business with any form of web experience has a Facebook Page. Or they certainly should do

The benefit of having a Facebook presence is well documented and largely understood, but perhaps the understanding of the mechanics of engagement with Facebook content on a Page is a little misunderstood.

A Facebook page is very different to a Facebook friend on a personal account. Whilst (with the relevant settings) you will see everything your friend posts to Facebook on a personal account, the algorithms that Facebook utilises on Facebook Pages is such that not all posts will be seen by those people liking a Facebook Page on their News Feed.

The key words to be aware of when analysing your Facebook Page stats are Organic Reach and Paid Reach. And you’ve probably cracked why not all content posted from a Facebook Page will be seen by everyone in his or her News Feed. Yes, Facebook wants those with Pages to pay to increase the visibility of their content. Whilst Organic Reach is the number of unique people seeing posts to Facebook Pages without paying for it, Paid Reach is the number of unique people seeing a Facebook post when money has been pumped in to advertising that post.

Which brings us on to the topic of content and maximising Organic Reach. The key purpose of posting content to Facebook is to engage your audience, more specifically with your brand. In which case, how should this affect the content you post? Well, analysis from social media analytics firm Locowise suggests that some content strategies are better served than others, depending on the number of people who like the page. If a Page has less than 10,000 Page likes then posting more web links to Facebook is a better strategy for gathering more Organic Reach. Utilising imagery with social media posts gathers as much Organic Reach as posts with just text and the use of video is a better way of boosting Organic Reach than either photo posts or text-only posts. The key is to maintain a consistent message, but utilise a variety of content methods and find which approach works best for your Facebook Page.

Planning social media content is a must. Take time to think about overall business objectives, objectives for the month/quarter and create a content strategy that enables the achievement of those objectives.