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Organic Facebook posts are one of the most powerful (and simple) tools you can use to establish your business as the authority in your industry.

And the best part…they’re FREE!

But if you’ve been on Facebook for any length of time, then you know your Facebook posts now only reach a fraction of the people they use to reach.  WHY?

Here’s what Facebook has to say:

Rather than showing people all possible content, News Feed is designed to show each person on Facebook the content that’s most relevant to them. Of the 1,500+ stories a person might see whenever they log onto Facebook, News Feed displays approximately 300. To choose which stories to show, News Feed ranks each possible story (from more to less important) by looking at thousands of factors relative to each person.

So in effect, Facebook says they only want to show your posts to people who are likely to be both interested and engaged in what it is that you’re sharing.

Here’s why…

Your audience is very diverse.  Some are local. Some are national.  Some are even international.

And even though they all like your page…they have a very diverse interests.

What can you do to ensure that your posts are relevant to your audiences’ interests?

Did you know Facebook gives you the ability to target your organic Facebook posts based on your audiences’ interest?

Introducing…

The Facebook Organic Posts Targeting Strategy

Let’s take a look at how to increase engagement on a Facebook page by targeting your organic posts.

Step 1 – Adjust Your Facebook Page Settings

You’ll want to click on the Facebook Settings tab in the top right of your page.

Next you’ll want to click on News Feed Audience and Visibility for Posts.

Then simply click the check box to allow news feed audience selection, and click Save Changes.

Now once you navigate back to your Facebook timeline you’ll see the audience targeting icon has appeared.

Step 2 – Target Your Facebook Organic Post

Now it’s time to write your Facebook post.  As you’re writing your post you’ll notice the Facebook Audience Targeting icon has appeared.

Once you have your post written, then click on the Targeting Icon.

Once you click on the Target Icon, you’ll notice your Potential post reach will appear on the right-hand side.  (Your potential audience will equal the total number of Facebook Page Likes you currently have.)

Now it’s time to start narrowing your potential audience.

Facebook currently gives you the ability to narrow your audience by:

Gender
Relationship Status
Educational Status
Age
Location
Language
Interests
Post End Date
As you select from these various options, you’ll notice your potential audience size continually decreases.
Since this particular Facebook post is about Social Media and Facebook strategy, I’m going to target based on “Interests.”

When you click on “Interests” you’ll notice another line appears.

Next, click on the “All Interests” link.

This will open popup a screen where you can start typing in the interests you’d like to target.

In this example, I’m going to target people interested in Facebook and social media marketing.

Once you’ve entered all the interests that you’d like to target, click on Target Interests.

You’ll notice that now our potential reach dropped from 4,733 to only 1,200.  This means that once we publish this post, only about 1,200 of the 4,733 people who like our page have the potential to see this post.

Seems terrible, right!?

Why would you want to reduce the number of potential people who see your post?

As we talked about a little earlier, Facebook is now rewarding people for posting content that is relevant – and by narrowing your audience you are able to drive up the relevancy of each post.

Based on their interest, I know these 1,200 people have expressed “interest” in social media and Facebook strategies.  And that’s exactly what this Facebook post, and the article it links to, is about.

What You’ll Discover

When you start using this organic post targeting strategy, you’ll know how to increase engagement on a Facebook page.

Over time you’ll see that your organic targeted posts out perform your un-targeted posts.

Although reducing the potential reach of your post seems counter intuitive (like not clicking the Boost Post button), you’ll find higher engagement with each post.

Need additional help? Here’s a video walking you through how to increase engagement to a Facebook page with organic post targeting: