Are you looking to increase your Facebook engagement rate?
Whether you own a Facebook Page or personal account, the definition of engagement remains nearly unchanged.
Please find below practical steps to enhance your Facebook post’s or page’s engagement rate.
Ways to increase Facebook engagement
What is Facebook engagement?
Engagement refers to people-driven actions such as liking of a post, commenting on or sharing the post, any clicking activity etc.
What is higher engagement?
Higher engagement extends a post’s organic reach and the popularity of its source. Because Facebook engagement, in common perception, is viewed as engagement in a Facebook business Page, we will, therefore, take a page in focus while talking about engagement in this article.
Facebook engagement refers to any action that someone does on your Facebook page. In other words, how a user interacts with your page content determines the level of engagement on your page.
What are the different types of Facebook engagement?
Facebook engagement could be divided into passive and active engagement. When someone readily interacts with your content in the form of comments, likes, shares, this can be seen as an active engagement. Whereas; if a post is getting timid reactions such as clicks, views etc., and is not creating immediately visible actions or prompting the audience to engage right away, it can be termed as passive engagement.
Content from people you know usually spark active engagement. A good engagement indicates that people are agreeing to your point of view, finding your content valuable, and support you. For example, a comment is an indication that a user has read the content and is willing to take the discussion further by adding his/her point of view.
A share in many cases is the best of all engagement types because it extends a post’s virtual footprint by many times.
Passive engagement also matters because it creates brand awareness and by posting useful content regularly, the page may start getting active engagement.
What algorithm does Facebook use to identify and promote engagement?
Facebook constantly updates its algorithms to present more relevant and better content experience to its users. The focus it seems is on prioritizing content that sparks meaningful conversations between real people.
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EdgeRank is the name commonly given to the algorithm that Facebook uses to determine what articles should be displayed in a user’s News Feed. As of 2011, Facebook has stopped using the EdgeRank system and uses a machine learning algorithm that, as of 2013, takes more than 100,000 factors into account.[1
Source – Wikipedia
Why fb page engagement matters?
Posts that are gathering engagements can help you –
- Increase your chance of news feed appearance
- Reach wider audience
- Get positive brand mentions
- Gain new customers and social proof
10 Powerful Ways to Increase Your Facebook Engagement
- Value over volume
Posting less has several other benefits and is directly proportionate to brand building.
- Posting quality content establishes organic and long standing relationship
- Posting less means more time to research and write better posts
- With so much of information available publicly, it is natural for your readers to get overwhelmed. Posting targeted content less frequently doesn’t add to the cycle
- Today, users want to be engaged in actively meaningful and value-loaded activities before being sold on your product with non stop prompts
- Providing consistent value by taking a practical posting schedule creates positive brand impression
If you are a news agency or a business where frequent posting is a natural part of your content marketing efforts, posting less content would backfire. So, while posting less frequently is the rule of thumb, it actually depends on your industry and audiences’ capacity to consume information. Also, you need to produce high quality content every time.
2. Type of post
Every social media platform is unique and the type of content that works for them differ too. GIFs go places in Twitter, hashtags do well n Instagram. Experts suggest video performs better than all other post types on Facebook, followed by images and link content as the next preferred type of Facebook posts.
For small businesses, creating videos can Facebook can be hard, time consuming and expensive. They can use free video tools or use other forms of engaged content based on audience interest. For example, small case briefs with images, asking for video testimonials fro clients, and live video on how using their service a problem can be solved etc may be a few authentic ways to promote a page.
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More on creating quality Facebook Page engagement using content –
- Try asking questions to your readers to elicit genuine and valuable response
- Offer polls, invite fans to comment, like or share.
- When people respond in comments, respond in reply immediately.
Thanks, Okay, Great to know that etc., are not useful replies. Rather attempt to understand the context of the comment and reply accordingly. Sometimes people comment so uselessly you do not need to reply at all. That’s fine!
Simply put, scramble your Facebook post content between multiple types. Produce value-loaded content (preferably those that solve an issue at work). Be real, truthful, reliable and fresh.
3. Know when fans are online
The timing of Facebook post is important because you know that your customers can not see your content when they are sleeping and busy at work (I mean really busy).
Rather, they may want to see what you’ve been up to when in transit, when they are relaxed and actively scrolling their feeds – probably trying to search your updates. That’s why it is very important to know when your audience is online. There are several social media management tools available online to accomplish this task.
How to see Facebook engagement post times for free?
If you want to do it yourself without paying for any tools, try this –
- Go to your page
- Click Insights on the left
- Under the overview section, click posts
- Access times data
4. Re purpose your old posts
Reproducing your old content can double the value of original content. For re purposing posts, identify the ones that gathered maximum engagement. Rather than posting the original piece as it is (which is basically re shares), try to add elements of freshness in it.
You can scramble the original high performing post into video or infographic or even add them as supporting resource for another content type. Like you can incorporate a highly shared image in a video you are presently making.
5. Boost your top performing post with advertisement
A strategic way to boost your page’s Facebook engagement is to list top performing posts and boost them using Facebook advertising. With right targeting, those posts can continue to garner ore limelight – reaching more people, creating massive engagement.
All you need is to have a small daily budget.
6. Use FB stories to be at the top of your fans’ feeds
Stories connect you with your customers organically. Create value oriented information, announce contests, post behind the scene pictures, offer limited time discounts.
In other words, seek to produce brand-focused, unique and memorable content in a timely manner and in such a way that your audience can relate to.
7. Link to other sources
Integrate your Facebook brand page with other digital properties including –
- Your own website/s,
- Social media platforms,
- Your own Facebook page/groups to drive as many targeted traffic as possible.
8. Keep posts short
Like the frequency of content, the length of content needs special consideration as well. It is preferred to produce short, crisper posts rather than long, detailed posts that often fail to keep audience interest.
Your readers – whether at a web page or social media platform – want to scan the information and if you are posting lengthy posts, you limit your chances for getting most page views. People to avoid information overload. Respect this thing.
9. Post consistently
Posting high quality content will not work if you fail to produce content consistently. In the digital world (in fact everywhere) the rule goes like this – out of sight is out of mind. Not just out of your audiences’ minds, out of Facebook’s mind too.
It is hard to regain lost attention, so consider posting frequently.
10. Employee advocacy
This is the best way to instantly boost your Facebook engagement. Employee advocacy refers to the promotion of a company by its own internal workforce. While employee advocacy can be accomplished in a number of ways with social media being the most popular and free option.
Benefits of having internal workforce to promote page
- Instantly boost your page engagement
- People connect with friends faster than brands
- Amplify your page’s social reach by a number of times
- Reach out to new audiences, possibly connecting with customers you never knew existed
- Save on paid promotion, even save money in content creation
The perils of employee advocacy on social media
Remember that by asking your employees to share your content, you are directly or indirectly imposing this on them. Moreover, there’s always a possibility that a disgruntled employee is revealing all your social media strategy publicly, adding fake flavors.
If an employee is willing to share a post, this is really cool. If s/he is not, this is bad, even unethical marketing.
More useful tips to have a successful Facebook brand page
- Don’t create personal profile for page
- Add relevant profile and cover photo
- Complete your About Us and all related sections perfectly
How to measure Facebook page engagement?
As discussed previously, Facebook’s built-in insights is the best place to start understanding the engagement analytics.
Marketers often see the success of engagement activities by what kind of actions audiences are taking. Offline recommendations, signups, downloads, purchasing activity etc., are believed positive consequences of engagement.
Conclusion
Every Facebook page is different and it may take a while before you see results. But moving forward with a strategy, and implementing the right steps in the right way should help you develop a thriving, successful brand page on Facebook.