Once upon a time, you could feel confident that when you posted something on social media, a decent chunk of your audience would see it.
Sadly, that’s no longer the case. Organic reach on major platforms has been shrinking for years – for instance, it dropped 18% on Instagram from January 2023 to August 2024.
Declining reach is a big problem for government agencies and public sector teams, which rarely have the budget to spend on social media ads. To help you out, we invited Zack Seipert to share his top tips for succeeding in a pay-to-play landscape, including:
👉 Creative, low-cost tactics to boost engagement and visibility (with zero ad spend)
👉 Real-life examples of government agencies that are getting it right
👉 Actionable tips to increase your audience reach
Let’s get into it.
Trends Affecting Social Media Marketing
Before we explore how to do it right, it’s worth taking a step back to consider the broader trends governing the social media world today.
Understanding the Social Media Landscape
Since Facebook first hit the web roughly two decades ago, we’ve seen some big developments:
👉 There are now (way) more social media platforms
👉 Nearly everyone accesses social media on their mobile phone rather than via laptop or desktop
👉 Chronological news feeds have been replaced with algorithmic content streams personalized to our individual tastes (more on this later)
Change has been rapid – and if you think it will slow down, you’ve got another thing coming. As futurist keynote speaker Jim Carroll says, “Today is the slowest day of technological change for the rest of your life.”
The World Is “Noisier” Than Ever
Coupled with the changes we highlighted in the previous section, there’s more content than ever.
As Mathew Sweezey, former director of market strategy for Salesforce and author of The Context Marketing Revolution, highlighted, June 24, 2009, marked the point at which the volume of content created by individuals caught up with business-created content.
Image adapted from The Context Marketing Revolution
With so much content shared every day, it’s tough for brands to cut through the noise – especially if they don’t have a substantial ad budget to lean back on.
The State of the Average Consumer
It’s no big secret that younger demographics spend more time online.
For instance, 18 to 24-year-olds in the US spend over three hours daily on social media platforms – almost 50% more than 35 to 44-year-olds.
Still, those figures are high, meaning every generation sees a lot of online content. We’re also supposedly bombarded with thousands of commercial messages daily across all mediums.
Combined, all of the above trends added up to one thing: content overload.
This encouraged social media platforms to make everything feel more manageable by updating their algorithms.
How Social Media Algorithms Affect Who Sees Your Content
To get more eyes on your content, you need to understand how social media algorithms work.
Broadly speaking, they come in two “flavors”:
| Algorithm type | How it works | Used by |
| Social graph | Prioritizes content from your immediate connections; favors accounts with large followings. | Facebook, LinkedIn, and others |
| Interest graph | Shows you content based on your interests and preferences; virality is a key factor here. | TikTok, YouTube, and others |
Due to TikTok‘s massive success, many social platforms are shifting partially or fully toward the “interest graph” model. This means that follower count and the number of shared connections are no longer the most significant indicators of organic reach.
In other words, the individual piece of content creates the reach, not the follower count. “This should get people excited,” Zack notes.
On-Post and Off-Post Tactics to Boost Organic Reach
If reach is all about the quality of your content, that means even small accounts can reach massive audiences. Here are some tactics to help you get it right, split into two categories – on-post and off-post.
On-Post Tactics
You can use these tactics on every post you share to increase reach.
Share (More) User-Generated Content
Think of ways to gather and share user-generated content, from running photo contests to starting employee advocacy groups.
Tap Into Trends
Trends can be anything from viral gifs and memes to trending audio. Jumping on social media trends can help you grow organic reach – just don’t try to hop on every trend that comes along. Instead, target trends that relate to your brand, goals, and audience.
Use Hooks Effectively in Video Content
You only have a few seconds to persuade someone to pay attention to your social media videos, so make sure the first couple of frames are super engaging. “Show your audience why that piece of content is important to them and why they should watch to the end,” says Zack.
There are lots of ways to do this, such as:
👉 Adding eye-catching transitions
👉 Using trending audio or sound effects
👉 Front-loading key messaging in social media captions
Leverage Social Media SEO
Social media SEO refers to making your social content more visible on Google. Various factors affect the search visibility of your posts, including:
👉 Hashtags
👉 Alt text
👉 Image file names
👉 Video titles
Inserting (relevant) keywords into those places makes it more likely that Google’s search crawlers will see your content and rank it for (relevant) searches.
Respond to Comments and DMs
Any time someone leaves a comment on one of your posts or – even more importantly – sends you a direct message, you should aim to respond as quickly as possible.
(Unless they’re being abusive or trolling you; then you can ignore and/or block them.)
The more you reply, the more likely other people are to comment and/or message you. This boosts your engagement rate and encourages social platforms to prioritize your content.
Off-Post Tactics
By contrast, off-post tactics are about the other steps you can take on social platforms to increase engagement and reach, such as:
Post Consistently
Sure, it’s great when an individual post blows up. But it’s more important to consistently share high-quality content that your audience loves – that way, people are more likely to engage, broadening the reach of your posts.
Or, as Zack puts it: “Posting consistently, becoming part of your audience’s schedule and routine, is more important than having a one-off post go viral.”
Explore Research, Metrics, and Monitoring
“If we really want to see organic reach, we need to know what’s working and what’s not,” says Zack. “And we can only do that by experimenting, by digging into the metrics, and by monitoring what other agencies are doing.”
Collaborate
This isn’t (necessarily) about collab posts on Instagram. Instead, it’s about extending your organic reach by collaborating with other agencies, stakeholders, businesses, individuals, and influencers.
“We have our audience, the person we’re collaborating with has their audience, and we can potentially see some audience overlap where we can gain new followers and organic reach when we’re collaborating,” Zack explains.
Create Your “Boost Brigade”
Simply put, a “boost brigade” is a group of fellow communicators you can call on to help increase your reach.
They might be in the public or private sector; you might know them in person or connect on LinkedIn; maybe you speak to them via Slack or a group text chain. Either way, the process works the same – you create content, then ask your “Boost Brigade” to engage with and/or share it.
“Doing this within the first couple hours after a post goes live can really help you see increased engagement,” says Zack. “It sends signals to the algorithm that this post is trending or picking up steam and should be rewarded with more organic reach.”
Just remember it’s not a one-way street – you’ll need to do the same for other people’s posts, too.
Comment Proactively
Take the time to comment on other content that’s relevant to your brand and audience. It shows that your organization is engaged and that you’re using social media as a social space, not a message board.
Advice From Government Social Media Marketing Gurus
As well as sharing his own advice, Zack rounded up tips from three other government social media marketing pros:
👉 Jennifer Davies from the City of Las Vegas
👉 Jameil Weldon from Mecklenburg County, North Carolina
👉 Bryson Jones from the US Fish and Wildlife Service.
Here’s what they recommended.
Prioritize Storytelling and Influencer Partnerships
Jennifer Davies stressed that the City of Las Vegas has a substantial ad budget. However, if she didn’t have that luxury, she’d focus on two key areas:
👉 Partnerships with other agencies, businesses, and influencers
👉 Storytelling campaigns to boost audience engagement
For example, to celebrate April Fool’s Day, they teamed up with influencer Daniel-Leo Wittenkeller, AKA the CEO of Las Vegas:
View this post on Instagram
Look at Your Data
Jameil Weldon, social media manager for Mecklenburg County, said the first step in boosting organic reach is to analyze data, metrics, and insights to identify what’s working (and what needs improvement).
Like Zack, she also urged government marketers to take advantage of user-generated content. For example, this post features a user-generated image captured by someone who attended the meeting.
Try New Things
Bryson Jones at the US Fish and Wildlife Service isn’t afraid to experiment with social media. Sure, not everything he tries will succeed, but it helps him better understand what resonates with the agency’s audience.
For example, at a time when every other account is obsessed with video, the US Fish and Wildlife Service shared this simple, emoji-based post:
It clearly worked, generating 1,700+ reactions and dozens of comments and shares.
Final Thoughts
We’d all love to return to a world of sky-high organic reach. But, sadly, it’s gone – and it’s never coming back. Many platforms see organic reach rates of just 2% – 4%, which are likely to drop further in the coming years.
As such, Zack says we simply can’t afford to rely on algorithms to do the hard work for us. “It’s up to each of us to keep up with the many changes that happen in social media, to do all that we can to get our content seen, and to be understood by our audiences.”
Are you seeking social media marketing tips, insights, and best practices for government social media? Register for our next social media conference!
Featured image by Pexels.
