So You Think You Can Reach Everyone?
In this day and age, you'd think that the best possible way to reach your target audience is via one of the social media platforms. No. It's one of the ways, but not the best way. Here's why.
1. Your post won't reach everyone in your friend's list
It won't reach half. It won't reach a third. It may reach a fourth if you're lucky or if you don't have that many friends. But it's likely a fifth or slightly lesser.
Friends who interact with you the most in that social media platform will most likely see your next post as the algorithm will see it that you're interested in this post, you'll likely to like the next one too. Still the number ain't going to be large. This is what is called organic reach.
What's worse is if you post a link say from YouTube into Facebook, Facebook decreases that organic reach even further as it wants to keep everyone within the platform. So now instead of a fifth, you're looking at a seventh? No one can tell for certain how low it gets, but the reach is miserable.
2. Your post will get lost in the crowd
If your friend has 1000 friends and has liked over 1000 pages and liked thousands of cute puppy photos, what's the chances of him/her seeing your post in a feed that jumps by the hundreds? So, even if Facebook sends what you post to your friend, he/she may not even see it. Organic reach is there, but opportunity is wasted.
3. You are not using the right method to reach your community
You have 1000 friends. Your post goes out to 150. Only 5 out of the 150 are your target audience. The other 200 didn't see the post. So how?
Well, stop posting business stuff into your personal profile. Create a business page or a community group, invite your friends interested in your classes to join the Page or Group. So the 150 who see your post even if though organic reach is low are 100% your target audience.
4. You will reach a wider audience only if you pay
The misconception is that influencers get paid by the platform. So you think if you have 10 million followers, Facebook will pay you because of that. It's more like the other way round. The more followers you have, the more likely you're going to PAY Facebook so that your content reaches more followers within the ecosystem.
By boosting your content, and depending on how much you are willing to spend, your content will now reach a wider target audience. So if you have an organic reach of 15%, you can pay and reach up to 45%, increasing your chances of people wanting to join your class.
How did you think Facebook makes money?
As you can see, social media isn't the best platform to reach your followers, but it is one of the platforms you can tap on to get your content and reach out there. This is something you'll need to take into consideration when you want to dive into content monetisation and grow your online business.