by Is your Facebook engagement falling? Want more people to comment, react, save, and share your Facebook posts?
In this article, you'll find seven tips you can use to improve your Facebook engagement.
Why Is Facebook Engagement so Important?
Facebook users can engage with content in many ways on the platform and each has unique benefits for business pages. But engagement of any kind on your content sends a message to Facebook's algorithm that the content is good and might be interesting to others.
Although the wonders of the Facebook algorithm are complex and technical, we know that the more engagement you get on a post, the more likely it is that Facebook will show that post and subsequent content to more people. And the more people who see your engaging content, the more likely they'll take action on it.
This also has benefits for future posts. You'll often see Facebook pages taking advantage of their previous engagement by posting again to get the next post shown to more people.
In this example, Very British Problems used a simple caption with some timely humor to create engagement.
Then 2 hours later, they shared a promotional post with a link. Typically, the algorithm would downgrade a post with a link. But by building engagement beforehand, this page showed that their content is valuable and therefore the second post is also perceived to offer some value to Facebook users.
Facebook wants users to stay on the platform, so if you're looking to drive people to your website, make sure that you're still sharing valuable content that gets engagement either on the post itself or in previous and subsequent posts (ideally both).
The five key types of Facebook engagement we're going to focus on are video views, reactions, comments, shares, and clicks. Each is useful to your business on its own but the best results come when you can get a variety of engagement types on your content. Here are seven tips you can use to get more interactions on Facebook.
#1: Use Engagement Prompts
If you want comments on your Facebook posts, you need to give people a reason to engage and make it easy for them to know what to say.
One way to do that is to ask questions. Typically, when you ask a question, readers will start formulating an answer in their mind immediately. They may also check out the other comments on the post to see what other people are saying and whether they have similar or opposing views.
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ACCESS FREE AI TRAINING NOWQuestions not only can elicit engagement but also help ensure you connect with the right people for your business and repel the wrong people.
In the post below, Rachel Miller asks a question that necessitates a longer answer and speaks to her ideal clients—business owners. By making the question specific, she rules out people who don't have their own business. And although this post is designed to get comments, featuring a shareable quote graphic helped it get reactions and shares as well.
Another way to encourage people to engage with your Facebook posts is to tell them how to engage. And the easier you make it, the better.
The post below gives people a simple way to engage and speaks directly to the page's target audience—parents of young babies. If this business were selling teething products, they could strike up a conversation to bring people further down the funnel to a buying decision on a product they feel they need.
You can also encourage people to comment on your posts by asking them to fill in the gaps or finish a sentence.
When you use these techniques to promote your business on Facebook, you can boost engagement on your organic posts and ensure you attract only the right people to your business.
#2: Speak to Attributes Your Target Audience Shares
When it comes to social media, people typically post content that shows them in the best possible light. They use filters, share only select parts of their lives, and always aspire to be as good as the people they follow.
That means they're also picky about what they comment on or share on social media because it may affect what other people might think of them. So if your content will make them look good to their peers, they'll be more likely to engage with it.
The posts below from fitness brand Gymshark not only speak perfectly to their ideal customer but also make their audience look good when they comment on or share the post.
You'll notice there's no link or photo in these posts. Just a simple caption is all that's needed to catch people's attention and get them to engage.
There's also some subtle humor, so undoubtedly people have engaged directly with the post, plus may have taken a screenshot and shared it elsewhere. This is great for Gymshark's brand awareness.
#3: Design Posts Around Specific Days or Current Events
Creating content around a holiday or current event is an easy way to get engagement on Facebook, particularly if you can tap into the emotions of your target audience.
Pro Tip: Make sure that you design your content specifically for Facebook rather than simply copy a post from another platform. The post below was timely and got incredible engagement on Instagram, where users tend to share posts to their stories or save them to use later. The same post didn't have the same impact on Facebook—possibly because the audience had already seen it on Instagram, and people aren't as likely to share or save posts on Facebook.
Another way to create timely content is to jump on trends. Earlier this year, memes featuring Bernie Sanders at the presidential inauguration were all over Facebook, and more recently the container ship stuck in the Suez Canal provided plenty of engaging content ideas.
While these are more widespread trends, smaller trends can work too.
In the post below, a local business jumps on a smaller trend by sharing a photo of a drink featuring Biscoff spread, which is really popular right now.
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GET THE DETAILSTimely content doesn't have to be created in the moment. It can be prepared months in advance. Incorporate awareness days in your marketing strategy that are relevant to your business and target audience. Use this content sparingly and strategically, though, to enhance your marketing rather than inform it.
Posts like the one below can generate a lot of engagement by highlighting awareness days that resonate with a page's target audience or are tied to the business's products, values, or personal story.
#4: Plan Facebook Posts People Will Save or Share
Creating content specifically designed for your audience to share or save can prompt engagement from not only that audience but also their friends. If your content is evergreen, it can show up every year in their Facebook memories and continue to get attention.
People love to save posts like recipes and how-to tutorials that they might want to refer to later. If they think these posts would be helpful (or make them look good) to their friends and family, they'll often share them or tag people in the comments.
The video below had more than 1.7 million views in the first 24 hours because it was shareable, timely content that people would want to refer back to in the future. It shows step by step how the creator made the recipe so people were sharing and tagging their friends who love sweet treats and baking.
By giving away the method but not the ingredients in the post, people had to click over to the website to get those details, building website traffic that this page could then retarget.
#5: Show Off Your Real Workplace or Processes
People are inquisitive and love to see what others are doing in their daily lives and at their business. Creating behind-the-scenes content to show how products are made or give your audience an insight into how you work can generate interactions.
You can also use this kind of content to share more about you and your values to build a deeper connection with your audience. People your story resonates with are likely to engage and share their own experiences, just like they did on this recent post from Jasmine Star.
#6: Give People a Chuckle
When you're creating content, keep in mind that that one key reason people are on social media is to be entertained. So if you can incorporate humor into your Facebook content, you'll be one step ahead of the competition. Make it timely and speak directly to your target audience and you're almost guaranteed to create engagement on your posts.
The post below is fun, timely, and speaks directly to this page's audience—people currently homeschooling during the pandemic and having to get their children to use Zoom for their lessons.
In this post, Innocent highlights their new smoothie while making it seem as though they're asking customers for their opinion on a new product. They give people an easy way to engage while also injecting their typical on-brand humor that people love them for.
#7: Go Live
Going live on Facebook gives you an opportunity to speak directly to your audience in real time and encourage them to engage with you in the comments or by using reactions. You can also encourage them to invite their friends to watch too.
By getting engagement while broadcasting live, you'll be signaling that your broadcast is useful or interesting content and Facebook will show it to more of your followers and notify them that you're live.
The key with a Facebook Live broadcast is to ensure the post itself compels people to watch, even if they join partway through.
When you're planning your broadcast, make sure you appeal to replay viewers and encourage them to engage too.
Pro Tip: Respond to all comments on your Facebook Live post to create even more engagement and continue the conversation. By doing so, you not only signal to the algorithm that the post is high-quality content but also strengthen the relationship with those engaged followers.
Use Facebook Insights to Inform Your Strategy
Facebook Insights provides a lot of valuable data for assessing how well your content is performing. The page summary gives you a brief overview of performance over a specific period of time (in the example below, 7 days).
You can also take a closer look at individual posts.
When looking at your page summary, it's important to note that engagement is a more valuable metric than reach. Engagement sends the right signals to the algorithm and helps you start building trust with your audience and bringing them further down the sales funnel.
If you think of reach as someone looking at your shop window, engagement is the equivalent of them walking into the store, which means they're more likely to become a buyer.
Insights helps you learn what your audience has reacted well to in the past so you can create more effective versions of those posts and repurpose your best-performing content in other ways. You can also learn valuable lessons from the content that didn't produce the engagement you were hoping for.
Additionally, Insights shows what content is performing well for pages with an audience similar to yours, which can inform your own content strategy.
Conclusion
Facebook has a reputation for being a “pay to play” platform for businesses. But if you create content that makes it easy for people to engage and gives them a reason to, you can get great results without spending money on ads.
Facebook wants people to have a great experience on the app so the algorithm serves content that will provide that. When you get comments, shares, and reactions on your content, it signals to the algorithm that they're enjoying it, which in turn will get it more widely distributed on the platform.
Be sure to review your Insights regularly so you can build on the content that works and learn from what doesn't.
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