Over the past few months, I have been reading articles and Blogs on the Organic Reach of your Facebook Pages. I was very much convinced by the theories and secrets shared by Industry experts around this area, that YES Facebook has gone all commercial now and the entire game on this platform can be played using Ads only. But what I experienced recently in my two days journey of In Search of Organic Reach , it was really heartbreaking in the beginning but then it changed my perceptions.

1. In Search of #OrganicReach.……Is it ALIVE?
Over the past few months, I have been reading articles and Blogs on the
Organic Reach of your Facebook Pages. I was very much convinced by the
theories and secrets shared by Industry experts around this area, that YES
Facebook has gone all commercial now and the entire game on this platform
can be played using Ads only. But what I experienced recently in my two
days journey of In Search of Organic Reach , it was really
heartbreaking in the beginning but then it changed my perceptions.
Before going further, I just try to clarify what Organic reach means.
What is organic traffic?
"Organic traffic" is traffic that comes to your website as a result of unpaid
search results. Frequently, one of the goals of SEO is to increase organic
traffic. Other types of traffic include: Pay Per Click (PPC) - traffic from
ads that cost money.
In simple words, Organic reach refers to how many people you can
reach for free on Facebook by posting to your Page.

2. What metrics are available on Page posts?
In the Posts section of your Page INSIGHTS, you can find following
metrics related to your page-
• The number of people your post reached
• The number of people who clicked your post
• The number of people who reacted to, commented on or shared your post
How to build engagement on your Page posts?
Facebook Ads : If the target is to expand your reach and obtain more
likes, nothing does a better job at doing that then Facebook Ads. Whether
you’re targeting a specific demographic or a broader audience, it’s an
effective way to create exposure.
Promoted Posts : Only users who already like your page or friends of
those users will be able to see the promoted posts.They are especially
useful if you want to promote a specific contest or event that has a
limited shelf life.
Content is the Supreme Power : At the end of the day, the
decrease of organic reach doesn’t mean the DEATH OF ORGANIC
REACH. Relevant and engaging content will always find a way to reach its
Audience . When users share your content, it’s essentially a free promoted
post in itself.
Now, after getting a bit clarity on organic and Paid reach to your Page posts
let me share my initially bitter but later overwhelming :) experience from the
Journey – In search of organic REACH.
Very recently, I got a chance to run a #FacebookCampaign. It was a Photo
contest and we needed to get the maximum number of LIKES on the pic.
BUT, LIKES were supposed to be generated through organic sources
ONLY. Means, we can not purchase LIKES or use Facebook Ads or any
other sort of Facebook promotions. I was all excited to begin. I recollected
all what I learnt in past few days, used all the strategies I read - from posting

3. TEXT QUOTES along with the PIC, to CATCHY Images to attract the
attention of Users. Likes started coming in our account. But since we had
very limited time to score the big number of likes, it was looking like a
nightmare to cross even the first few hundreds and then thousands of
LIKES. With each passing hours the target was becoming impossible. Each
Like was costing a lot of energies and efforts.
That day, I realized the cost of each single LIKE on #Facebook.
The increasing count doesn't lasted for long and there was a big silence in
between the LIKES. It was almost a LOST game for us. And the DEATH
OF ORGANIC REACH was very much visible. I tried reaching few
agencies to get what I was looking for but all these efforts were in vain. As
it was a contest of Organic Likes, it has to be fairly played.
I made a deep dive into google, "How to gather large number of
organic likes". And I moved from static Text and beautiful images to the
next level of Video animations ( created by tool #Viddyoze ) to promote the
campaign further. With animations coming into picture, I was able to capture
attention of many more Audience and got free promotions from them as
well. This was like a free treat from them :)

4. What we achieve after 48 hours of Campaign was overwhelming –
21K Likes 7.7K Comments 5.8K Shares
Glimpses of some of the Statistics as provided by Facebook INSIGHT on
one of the few Facebook Pages which we used during our two days
campaign –
Total Reach : 10K Organic Reach, 0 PAID

5. Post Reach : 8.8K Organic, 0 PAID
Another interesting analysis that we discovered, was the level of engagement
on different types of posts like Texts, Images and Videos which I referred in
the beginning of my sharing.

6. 5 Most Recent Posts
The advantages of Videos over Images and that of Image over text was very
much visible in the results. And then, small gifs and animated videos
brought more engagement from the Audience.
And of course, how can I forget the most nervous moment of the campaign.
when I thought of going LIVE. #LiveStreaming on Facebook was a real
different experience. You are in totally different world once you press the
button GO LIVE. As soon as you do this, the video feed appears in your
timeline and people following your page will get Notification of you being
LIVE. And you can see people joining your Live Streaming session and
interacting with you using comments/Likes. Learning here I got was that if
you want a bigger Audience to attend, you can announce in advance with
another post, when you plan to broadcast LIVE.
Over time, the Images took over text, videos took over
images, recently the Live Streaming took over Videos,
question is WHAT NEXT......

7. Of course, not to underestimate the power of human network and being
social, without this strength it wasn't possible for us to achieve what we did
in the journey which lasted for long 48 hours. It was like a team campaign
wherein the number/size of your team members was ever increasing on it's
own. And then rather than a simple campaign project it became more like a
WAR ZONE. In the end, what mattered most was that we were declared, the
WINNER of the Show.
And now going back to the same question from where we begin our
journey,
Is the Organic Reach still ALIVE ....?
YES.. OUR JOUNEY WAS ALL ORGANIC AND WE PLAYED
A FAIR GAME !!
With lots of Gratitude,
Jyoti Chopra