Let’s face it, Organic Reach – or the number of people who see a specific post without paid promotions – can be pretty pitiful.  Social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook tend to operate as a ‘pay-to-play’ sites, meaning you really don’t get much for free anymore. 

However, reaching new audiences organically isn’t something you should overlook.  

As the fundamental metric of social media, the Organic Reach of your posts determines engagement rates. Essentially the more you have, the more engagement you will receive.  

Okay… but what actually is Organic Reach? 

To break it down a little further, Organic Reach refers to the number of unique accounts that have viewed a post uploaded to a social media platform. Think the number of eyes that have seen the post for the first time. This metric does not account for any paid tools that would be used to boost the post’s visibility.  

So how do I promote the Organic Reach of my posts? 

Here’s some of our tips to keep in mind! 

• Quality over quantity 

There’s really no need to be posting multiple times a day – less is often more when it comes to social media content. Trial uploading a maximum of once a day but put as much value as possible into each post. Encourage your audience to engage with your content by asking questions and prompting them to share the post with their friends.  

• Be original

Be sure to minimise uploading images that aren’t your own. Although they might look pretty on your feed and match your branding, these kinds of stock images can have damaging consequences to your account – Instagram can see you as ‘inauthentic’ if you’re reposting images it’s seen multiple times before.  

• Change up your content 

With Instagram moving away from being a photo sharing platform, Reels are truly your best bet for reaching people outside your current audience and promoting Organic Reach. Carousels have also been shown to get considerably more reach than a single image post. 

• Consider a hashtag strategy 

Do your research and create several hashtag blocks. Here at Clique, we like to use a combination of hashtags that have more than 1m posts, between 200k and 1m posts, less than 200k posts, and our own brand hashtags for each post.  We also love using Tags Finder as a resource to find geographically-relevant hashtags.  

So, is organic reach dead? Well, it’s definitely not what it used to be, but there are still a few ways to make a crust out of the crumbs that Facebook allows us.