7 Easy Ways to Increase Facebook Engagement Organically
How to Increase Facebook Engagement
“Engagement” is a buzzword we often hear in the marketing world, but what does post engagement mean on Facebook?
According to Facebook, post engagement is measured by the number of users who interact with your posts. This can be from reactions, comments, shares, viewing your photo or video, and clicking on your link.
Facebook engagement is crucial for any social media marketing strategy, especially if you want to reach audiences far and wide without paying a dime to get people onto your website.
All you’ll need to do is tweak your social media strategy with these seven effective tips to increase Facebook engagement today.
1. Posting Times and Frequency
Although Facebook’s algorithm has changed a lot in previous years, making it hard for brands to appear on user’s News Feeds, there are still ways to hack it by posting at the right time and keeping a consistent frequency.
With a little planning and some research, you can easily interact with your audience based on their peak engagement times, and which days they tend to interact with posts.
Associate Product Manager of NewLifeOutlook, Alyssa Winegarden, explains:
“Every community is made up of unique users and demographics. Instead of utilizing times that may be the most active for Facebook in general, refer to your page’s Insights to see what days and times your users are most active, and schedule posts according to that. I personally try to schedule approximately 20 minutes prior to peak times to ensure the post is already in their news feed when they sign on and begin to scroll.”
Audiences across our NewLifeOutlook Facebook pages consistently engage with posts that include visual content.
2. Share User Valuable Content With an Enticing Message
Do you create content that speaks to your users, and if so, are you sharing it? How are your users engaging with it? Are you getting the engagement you want to see?
If you’re noticing certain posts get more attention than others, then it might be time to rethink what exactly you’re sharing. So, how do you select a piece of content that’s worth sharing?
Ask yourself these four questions:
- Does it solve a problem?
- Is it actionable?
- Does it relate to your audience specific needs?
- Is it time-sensitive?
If your answers are ‘yes’ then you’ve got some great content to share. If not, tweak your content until it becomes meaningful.
3. Learn From Your Successes and Failures
Life is about constantly learning from both your mistakes and successes. What may have been a good idea might not have exactly paid off in the way you thought it would. This is the main reason why tracking your post performance matters.
Reading between the lines of your post’s data is an easy way to see what worked and what didn’t. For example, perhaps your post was too long, or you didn’t include any visuals, which may have caused your engagement to drop. Or maybe you hosted a Facebook Live event and the engagement you received was phenomenal.
Analyzing your data might take a few extra minutes of work each week, but is one of the easiest ways to see how your content is performing, and what improvements can be made to achieve your goals.
4. People Love Visuals
Videos and photos have been consistently populating Facebook News Feeds for over the past five years because of how eye-catching and attention-grabbing they are.
According to a Buzzsumo study, an analysis of more than 100 million Facebook updates over a three-month period revealed that Facebook posts that used images received 2.3 times more engagement than those without.
Natasha Devine, Associate Product Manager of Travel-Wise, says:
“Image posts on Facebook, like our shareable travel quotes, see a 50% higher engagement rate on average than link posts. Bright, inspiring visuals seem to connect with the audience and invite more interaction.”
Images of travel destinations always do well on our Travel-Wise accounts.
5. Keep It Concise
Did you know that Facebook’s character limit supports up to 60,000 characters? Realistically, you should be using a fraction of that to send your message out.
So what exactly makes the perfect Facebook post? Digital Content Coordinator of Travel-Wise, Marissa Evans, says:
“You don’t want it to be so short that people don’t have any idea of what the article is about, but you also don’t want it to be so long that people feel like they already have all of the information they need from the blurb. They need incentive to click on the post to find out more about the topic. 40 characters is just enough to draw them in.”
6. Get Involved in the Facebook Community
Go beyond your Facebook page and get involved in Facebook groups. This is another conventional way to drive engagement back to your page.
Facebook defines groups as a “place for small group communication and for people to share their common interests and express their opinion. Groups allow people to come together around a common cause, issue or activity to organize, express objectives, discuss issues, post photos and share related content.”
In these Facebook groups, you’ll want to be active and engage with other members while self-promoting your page or your website, just don’t look too spammy or else you might be removed from the group, and your content could be deleted.
7. A Call to Action That Clicks
Don’t underestimate the effectiveness of a good call to action (CTA) on Facebook. By using the right words you could actually see an increase in both Facebook engagement and reach.
According to a report by TrackMaven, the average engagement rate of posts which used the terms “share,” “please,” “now,” and “like” received more engagement than those that didn’t.
Lizz DiCesare, Digital Content Manager at Perk Canada, says:
“If people are passionate about your cause or product, they will want to support it. A call to action is a simple and effective way of allowing your audience to engage with your company, and show their support.”
It’s as simple as that.
After applying these easy tips to your social media marketing strategy, you can expect more organic engagement on Facebook, and crush your 2018 goals.
Resources
TrackMaven (The Marketing Maven’s Guide to Facebook)
Buzzsumo (How to Massively Boost Your Blog Traffic With These 5 Awesome Image Stats)
Buffer (Inside the Facebook Algorithm: All the Updates You Need to Know)
