What more can I do to grow my audience?

I’ve had my nonprofit FB and IG page for 12 years now. The first decade I didn’t put much into it and just shared random posts I’d come across, over the last year and a half I’ve been going as hard as possible with them.

I went from only ever sharing other people’s content (mostly memes) to only posting original content, the crazy part? Monetizing and outreach were both good back then, the last year monetizing and my outreach have both been horrible. I have 60k organic followers on FB and 1,300 on IG, I’m lucky to get a “viral” post every 4/5 months and it’s not viral in the sense of getting millions of hits.

For YEARS I’ve heard “you need to make original engaging content that aligns with your goal.” I still see that posted daily here. Yeah…I do that, very well in fact. At this point in time I’m basically an expert in Canva/CapCut/several AI tools and know my insights and algorithms like the back of my hand. I know my target audience, ages, locations, best times to post, how frequently to post, keywords, hashtags, how to engage with my audience, and exactly what does well and doesn’t do well. The problem is over the last year almost nothing performs well ever.

I see a ton of pages posting absolute nonsense and AI slop getting insane traction every day, I have a 501(c)(3) and professional reputation to uphold so I can’t just post nonsense like that and maintain professionalism. Some joking memes/videos/reels/stories relating to my nonprofit sure, but not slop to fill random feeds, is that all that does well these days?

At this point I’d say it’s likely that I’ve spent well over 10,000 hours studying this stuff on google, YouTube, Reddit, books, and networking so I should be an expert on the matter, yet the engagement doesn’t reflect that…not nearly as much as it once did when I was just reposting content that wasn’t mine. So what more am I supposed to do?

I’m on FB, IG, Threads, TikTok, have a beacons page, new website in the works (that is absolutely amazing and finally being done by a professional rather than myself), but I’m basically at a loss. A massive part of my organization is public education/outreach, so social media is vital to its success. I can’t even expand on my grassroots networking without a strong social media presence and that’s the whole purpose of my organization.

Any advice is greatly appreciated because I’m starting to get so frustrated I can barely sleep at night. I could see if I was just doing things wrong or missing a bunch of key points but I assure you I’ve triple checked everything I was doing/currently doing and all I see is my social media drowning before my eyes with zero explanation as to why. My biggest regret now is not going as hard as I do these days a decade ago when it was clearly much easier.

Thanks in advance.

Comments

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BIGVU_Sammy•3 months ago•1

I do not think you need to post more. You probably need a sharper message and content people instantly care enough to share or save.

Meta keeps pushing original content, but it still has to feel relevant fast.

At this point, I’d cut the weak platforms, double down on the best-performing topics, and make posts that speak to one clear pain point instead of trying to educate everyone.

No_Procedure8667•3 months ago•1

couple things that might be going on here.

the switch from sharing other people's content to all original is actually a bigger change than it sounds. your audience followed you over 10+ years for a certain type of content. you basically changed the product on them. not saying go back to memes, but the transition period is rough and a lot of accounts lose engagement during it. mixing original with some curated stuff (maybe 60/40) might ease the gap.

also, FB organic reach for pages has been declining hard across the board. meta keeps pushing pay-to-play. a nonprofit with 60k organic followers is honestly impressive, but the platform is actively working against you now compared to even 3 years ago.

couple things that have helped similar accounts i've seen:

- reels are getting disproportionate organic reach on both FB and IG right now. if you're not doing short video, that's probably the biggest lever

- check your story engagement vs feed. sometimes the audience is still there, just consuming differently

one more thing, and it's the hard one. if monetizing and outreach are the real goals, start building an email list if you haven't. relying on FB/IG organic for a nonprofit in 2026 is a shaky foundation because meta can change the rules whenever they want and you have zero control.

No-Perspective872•3 months ago•1

Social media is changing, and if you don’t change with it you will be left behind. It’s now a search engine. Create content that people are searching for. Use captions and on screen titles to help the algorithm categorize and push your content to the right people. I keep seeing people say that social media is dead, but I’ve gained 18k followers on TikTok in the last month. It’s alive and kicking!

Final-Print8272•3 months ago•1

Honestly this sounds less like you doing something wrong and more like platform shift + content distribution changing. Organic reach (especially on FB/IG) has just tanked hard unless content gets early external push or remix traction.

One thing I’d try is leaning into distribution, not just creation. You already know how to make good content, now it’s about getting it seeded in more places. Some pages are using networks that remix and repost variations across multiple accounts to trigger reach. Something like Cracked (they basically take your best performing posts and spin out viral variations across their AI influencer network) is built around that idea. Not saying rely on it fully, but it’s the kind of layer you’re probably missing.

Also worth experimenting with platforms like Jasper or Hootsuite just for testing different formats/styles quickly at scale. You don’t need to post “slop,” but you do need more surface area and repetition now, one good post isn’t enough anymore.

Final-Print8272•3 months ago•1

Honestly this sounds less like you doing something wrong and more like platform shift + content distribution changing. Organic reach (especially on FB/IG) has just tanked hard unless content gets early external push or remix traction.

One thing I’d try is leaning into distribution, not just creation. You already know how to make good content, now it’s about getting it seeded in more places. Some pages are using networks that remix and repost variations across multiple accounts to trigger reach. Something like Cracked (they basically take your best performing posts and spin out viral variations across their AI influencer network) is built around that idea. Not saying rely on it fully, but it’s the kind of layer you’re probably missing.

Also worth experimenting with platforms like Jasper or Hootsuite just for testing different formats/styles quickly at scale. You don’t need to post “slop,” but you do need more surface area and repetition now, one good post isn’t enough anymore.

Rich-Editor-8165•3 months ago•1

It sounds like you’re doing a lot right, but things just don’t work the same anymore. The polished, “correct” content doesn’t get pushed like it used to. What’s working now feels more raw or specific, even if it’s less perfect.

o_Oleh•3 months ago•1

This is a tough spot and honestly a really common one for people who actually know what they're doing. The algorithm rewarding nonsense over quality content is frustrating and real.

A few thoughts:

The shift from resharing to original content probably hurt your reach more than you realize. Facebook and Instagram, in particular, have significantly throttled page reach these days, and reshared content that already has engagement signals tends to travel further than fresh original posts. That's not a reason to go back to resharing, but it explains part of the drop.

Cross-platform consistency is where a lot of nonprofits lose ground. You're on FB, IG, Threads and TikTok but each platform needs its own adapted version of your content to perform. The same post copied across platforms gets buried. This is exactly the problem Shaflex is built to solve. You write once and adapt per platform without rewriting everything from scratch, which saves hours and means each platform gets content that actually fits its format and audience.

On the engagement side, your 60k FB followers are mostly not seeing your posts organically. Facebook page organic reach is around 2 to 5 percent now. Stories and Reels still get pushed harder than static posts.

TikTok is probably your biggest untapped opportunity right now. Nonprofit content that educates does really well there, and the organic reach is still significantly better than Meta.

One practical move: focus less on posting frequency and more on getting existing content to travel further. Reposts, collaborations with aligned accounts, and community tagging all help more than posting more often.

What's the nonprofit focused on? Happy to give more specific advice.

contentstudiohq•3 months ago•1

the algorthm shift that probaly explains most of this is that platforms have been systematicaly reducing organic reach for pages over the last few years regardless of content quality.. what worked at 30k folowers doesnt work the same way at 60k because the distibution mechanic itself has changed. the accounts getting traction posting low effort content are often doing it through engagement pods or early share networks that artificialy spike the first hour signal, which is what triggers wider distibution

grogoapp•3 months ago•1

Don't underestimate the power of conversation and actual engagement! How often are you rewarding the people that do mention you on socials by commenting on their stuff? Try searching your nonprofit organically and commenting on any post that mentions you. What kind of non-profit are you? Could you find videos that align with its work and comment on them as the business? For instance, if you help people with cancer, can you find videos of people beating cancer and comment on them things like "Love this. This is what it's all about!"? I find that when I engage with my core audience and then go out and comment, I gain more followers. Some people may not even realize you have a page or that they aren't following you already. Do you partner with people and ask them to tag you in posts? Collaboration is another HUGE way to gain more audience members.

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