A popular question that we’ve heard from the business community lately is if it’s necessary to pay for Facebook advertising to get results from the social media platform.

Facebook offers a phenomenal paid advertising platform that gives businesses the tools to get very granular with targeting content. By paying for Facebook advertising and taking advantage of these targeting tools, businesses are able to get increased exposure and faster results.

At New York Ave, we recommend a mix of both paid Facebook advertising and quality organic content with an emphasis on the latter. We firmly believe that SEO is a result, not an action. We apply this philosophy to Facebook marketing by creating quality organic blog content that is relevant to the interests of your fans and followers. By doing this on a consistent basis, our clients earn more credibility and trust from their audiences. This positions them as authorities in their industry, ultimately helping our clients to earn more online visibility and conversions.

Here are 3 Facebook marketing tactics that will boost your organic reach:

1. Publish evergreen content.
While Facebook’s algorithm looks at a number of factors when displaying content in newsfeeds, the usefulness of your content plays a critical role. Since evergreen content adds value and is relevant over an extended period of time, publishing an evergreen Facebook post can keep your post engagement going strong.

For example, even if it’s been 2 days since you published a helpful evergreen Facebook post, it could continue to appear in your audience’s newsfeeds if someone engages with it the following day. Because evergreen content has no expiration date, it will continue to provide long-term value for your business.

2. Focus on quality over quantity.
Yes, there’s a lot of pressure to consistently create fresh content on Facebook. Instead, focus on sharing quality content on Facebook–address relevant pain points, ask an intriguing question to invite conversation or offer your point of view on a related news story. By doing this, you’ll be much more successful in getting traction organically from your Facebook posts.

3. Post during off-peak times.
Ideally, you want to publish content when the bulk of your audience is on Facebook. However, with so much content to compete with on this social media platform, there’s a very good chance that posting at peak times will do very little to help your online visibility.

Do you know when your audience is most likely to be on Facebook? Head over to Facebook Insights to see what time the majority of your fans are online. Instead of posting at the peak time, publish Facebook content at times when there will be less competition for newsfeed space.

Yes, many businesses are experiencing a decline in Facebook organic reach. However, putting these 3 best practices to work will help you to reach more of your fans organically and prevent you from having to spend a lot of money on Facebook advertising.