Organic Reach is Shrinking – 4 Ways to Keep Your Audience

Changes in social media dynamics are making most tried and tested strategies a thing of past. Social media is no longer about getting likes on Facebook or followers on Twitter. There has been emergence of plethora of other social channels like Instagram, Pinterest, vine etc

Multiple factors are transforming today’s social channels:

• Organic reach on various channels is falling to single digits which implies that increasing likes or followers will progressively have no meaning
• The limited organic reach which business will have on their accounts will be strictly governed by the kind of content shared on social and kind of content consumed by the individuals
• Each individual behaves as a different persona on different social channel and mode of engagement has to be customized for each social platform
• Like Display Ads people have started to develop sub-conscious blindness towards the ad cutter over their social pages

Social platforms have been smart to get hordes of users on their platform and businesses can no longer ignore this channel. With organic reach diminishing by the day, innovative ways needs to be adopted to get the best out of social media.

1. Engaging content: Getting business is the ultimate goal but, should not be the starting point. This is what most businesses fail to understand and drive ineffective content/campaigns. People are on your social platform to consume content which overlaps with their interest and not to be fed with regular “BUY ME” posts.  Another important aspect where business are missing out is by ignoring comments made on the posted content. Engagement is a two way process and it deepens further if businesses actively participate in social conversations.
2. Innovative Paid Campaigns: Along with standard paid campaigns, marketers need to make campaigns which have the capability to go viral.  The current design of social platform has ensured that paid is the most efficient way to reach people. However, an important point missed by most marketers is that organic content for business pages may be reducing but, peer to peer content reach is still very high.  Hence, campaigns designed with dual purpose i.e. focus on transaction and gratification for content social sharing can yield better result. Any content shared by a person has a higher probability to be seen/read or action taken by peers in his social group. The viral effect of such campaign is immense.
3. Campaigns around trending topics on social: This is new method which can be adopted by businesses to marry their campaigns with trending topics. Digital gives ample access to real time data but, the key to success lies in how innovatively and quickly one learns and improvises. Trending topics in this context gives excellent opportunity to create campaigns and content around them for higher relevancy and engagement.For this digital wing of companies have to be very nimble as trending stories life span is small but, can be impactful. Also trending topics based campaigns can bring a sense of urgency to “Call to Action”.
4. Influencer led campaigns: In the world of social media, influencer driven marketing has become important. There are people from different walks of life whom people follow, idolize and get influenced by their social media activities. These personalities can be from sports, movies, business, fashion and various other fields.  Businesses can liaise with social personalities relevant for their target audience and engage with their social circle with interesting content. Good content presented in a form which is accepted and appreciated by influencer’s social circle increases brand connect and improves engagement manifold.

Written exclusively for Paul Writer.