Remember when Facebook gave us the great Audience Optimization update? It was brilliant and we all cheered. Of course we wanted to up our organic reach and engagement.

Here is what it looked like in case you don’t remember, or weren’t utilizing the tool:

But it left just as quickly as it came, being swept away with Facebook’s latest page update. I didn’t realize it was gone at first, but after the Pages update, marketers were quick to comment and react. I noticed in the comments section of well known blogger’s posts that people were asking, “Hey, what happened to the audience optimization?” I waited about a week for a response, and some action on the topic, until I decided to go hunting myself. Eventually, I found it! Let me walk you through the steps.

So for starters, optimizing your audience settings is very important for the success of your Facebook page. With 1.71 billion active users on the platform, I’m sure I speak for all of us when I say “You want your stuff seen by the people that matter most.”

With the preferred audience, you can pick and choose who your organic posts are shown to. This is an organic targeting tool to help Facebook understand your page while delivering your posts to the right audience.

The first thing you’ll want to do is turn on your audience optimization for posts. To do this go to Settings, and on the left hand side, click general. Below you will see that all you need to do is click “Allow preferred audience selection and the ability to restrict the audience for your posts” to turn it on – then save changes.

Next, you’ll need to set up your audience. On the left hand side, you’ll see Preferred Page Audience. Here is where you can edit and set up who you’d like your posts to be shown to. For a local dealership, a preferred page audience might look like the example below. *Notice you get an estimate reach, just like you do in the ads manager.

If your business isn’t quite local and you want to reach a bigger audience with more interests, your preferred audience may look like the image below. While you may think this is a large audience, keep in mind that by including all of the interests of the people you want engaging with your page, you’re giving Facebook a better understanding of who are as a business.

So what are my thoughts so far? Well, if Facebook is giving me a free tool that’s going to better my organic reach, I’m going to use it.

Have I seen a difference? Let’s look at the insights. This company’s preferred audience was set up on August 1,2016. There’s a bit of a difference in the organic reach.

Here’s another example of organic insights after the audience was optimized:

Now, I’m sure we can attribute this to a number of things (more shares, compelling content, engaging posts) but you can’t ignore the facts. After the audience was optimized, the organic reach went up.

Now it’s up to you to decide. If you haven’t yet, go set up your preferred audience and let me know in a month if you’ve seen a difference in organic reach!

About the Author

Denise Casagrande, Vice President of Marketing at PCG, is passionate about humanizing brands across social channels. She feels the connection businesses can make with their clients can be ever-lasting based off of the messages they're displaying through content. Creator of the Automotive Social Media Sales Funnel.