When it comes to successful social media marketing, figuring out how to boost (and sustain) engagement is key. And particularly when you’re using Facebook for business, nurturing engagement can be one of the best ways to extend your organic reach and solidify your online presence.
An engaged online audience wants to interact with your brand and share your content, which can help set off a domino effect of likes, shares, and comments. Think of Facebook engagement almost as a modern-day version of word-of-mouth marketing – ultimately, it’s something that every business should strive for.
What is Facebook Engagement?
What does engagement mean on Facebook? In simplest terms, engagement is any action an online user takes on your brand’s Facebook page (or on one of your posts).
Facebook’s organic reach has been on the decline for several businesses. This has become a common theme across Facebook due to the ever-growing competition in news feeds and the overuse of promotional posting efforts.
At V Digital Services, we know that with these changes continuing, it is crucial that brands and business owners remember their organic reach and how to maximize it as best as possible.
How to Increase Your Organic Reach On Facebook
Below, we’ve provided a list of tips on how to best increase and grow your Facebook page’s organic reach.
1. To be automatic or not
The key thing to remember here is that this is a social platform. Your business and brand, whether you’re a small business or a global sensation, needs a human touch. While your latest blogs, announcements, and product updates are essential items to post about, that is not all you should be posting about. Share team photos and or recent activities to show the culture of your business to consumers, both current and potential.
2. Understanding the Facebook ecosystem
Don’t cheat the system! While this may seem understandable to most, some companies want fans and want them now. They will end up buying thousands of “likes” for cheap. While the number of likes may go up, none of them are truly engaged in your content. They are simply fake or inactive accounts that won’t speak truth to your company’s success and, in the long run, this will hurt your Facebook pages’ organic reach. It truly is a sheer waste of time. Stick with the Facebook guidelines and stay in the good graces of the company. There are several ways to expand your reach and grow your page, without buying likes.
3. Evergreen content
“Freshness” is not just a factor when it comes to rankings on Google. Producing timeless and original content on Facebook, it will be useful for your audience for an extended period of time, rather than a limited window. When you post content that is not only original, but also timeless and speaks to everyone, it will in turn be distributed further and appear in feeds for a longer period of time.
4. Use Organic post targeting
Many believe targeting is only limited to Facebook Ads, however, this is simply not true. You can target organic posts on Facebook. Some cool features of utilizing targeting for an organic post are that you may set an end date for your post to stop showing within the news feed. The post will still be visible on your page’s timeline, but the post only limits the visibility of viewers’ newsfeeds, and your post must target 20 people at the very least.
5. Post at the right time
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Use your Facebook insights to ensure when the best times and days are to post. By doing this, you’ll be sure to post whenever will be the most engaging and successful time for your audience. When you fail to utilize this free information, it is common that the audience will not view or engage with these posts, as they are not being pushed live at the best times.
6. Utilize video on Facebook
Since June 2014, Facebook has averaged well over one billion video views every single day. When it comes to posting videos on Facebook, some important tips are to keep the video short (two minutes or less is best), choose an appropriate thumbnail, and make it look professional by using good lighting and editing techniques. Videos are being used more and more in order to create a greater call to action. These call-to-actions could be a Book Now, Download, Shop Now or even Learn More, by providing them with a clickable link taking them where they need to go to complete any of that calls-to-action.
7. Test and know your posting frequency
While many media outlets post several stories a day, brands and smaller businesses must be careful about how frequently they are posting. Posting multiple times a day, it can overwhelm your audience and hurt your page’s algorithm. However, the key is to find out what works best and why. By testing your page frequency, and by posting high-quality, engaging variations of content, you should be able to tell not only what your audience prefers, but when they prefer to view and engage with it and when they’ve had too much.
How to Calculate Facebook Engagement Rate
Your Facebook engagement rate represents the amount of interaction your content receives relative to reach or audience size. This might include likes, comments, shares, or saves, as well as direct messages, click-throughs, mentions/tags, and more.
There are many ways to measure Facebook engagement rate to tailor your approach based on your primary objectives. The most common approach is to calculate the engagement rate by reach, but you can also figure out the engagement rate from specific posts, impressions made (ideal for paid content), or your daily engagement rate, just to name a few.
How to Increase Engagement on Facebook
Achieving better engagement on Facebook doesn’t have to be hugely complicated, but it requires time, effort, and strategizing. Here are 17 practical tips to support your business’s Facebook engagement.
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Create content with a purpose.
Your Facebook followers aren’t following your brand so they can receive a daily sales pitch – and pushy posts are certainly not going to inspire engagement. Instead, Facebook users are most interested in content that serves a purpose in their online experience, contributing to their lives in one way or another.
So, focus on developing content that teaches, informs, entertains, or inspires. Not only will this type of content garner audience engagement, but it will also establish your brand as one to be trusted.
Understand your audience.
What your audience finds interesting or entertaining will differ from what you believe is relevant. When you’re using Facebook for marketing, it’s the audience’s wants and needs that count, not yours.
Until you take the time to really get to know your audience, it will be challenging to figure out precisely what to post on Facebook.
Make use of Facebooks analytics to gather crucial information about your audience, focusing on details that will help you create more relevant content.
Keep it short and sweet.
Did you know that over 98% of Facebook users access the platform on a mobile device? This makes it incredibly important that your posts are concise because nobody wants to read several paragraphs on a smartphone screen.
Ideally, each post will grab users’ attention, so they will stop mid-scroll and actually read (and engage with) the content.
Remember that quality counts.
In today’s fast-paced digital age, subpar images, videos, and text will inevitably get passed by. Modern online users expect a certain level of quality, and failing to provide that will result in disappointing engagement rates – and, even worse, a sense of distrust in your brand’s capabilities.
Rather than rushing to churn out as much content as possible, remind yourself that quality – not quantity – is what matters. Consider content curation if you’re struggling to keep up a consistent online presence using only original content. You can share relevant, high-quality content from other creators to maintain an active presence without sacrificing the integrity of your original content.
Be authentic and relatable.
Authenticity is becoming increasingly valuable online, especially as users seek honest, “real” content to which they can relate. Being professional does not necessarily equate to being overly polished; presenting content that depicts the real story of your business is an excellent way to build lasting relationships.
What does this look like on Facebook? This authenticity can manifest as standing up for your brand values, sharing humorous memes, and incorporating an element of emotion into your content.
Use quality images and video.
Visual content can be a powerful tool for engaging your audience, particularly on a platform such as Facebook. And according to Facebook itself, the best images are those that keep things simple: think of a product close-up or a portrait of a happy customer. For Facebook videos, focus on quickly delivering your message in an interesting, well-produced manner.
Refer to Page Insights.
If you really want to refine your Facebook engagement, posts that cater directly to your audience’s interests are a must. Using the Facebook Page Insights tool, you can get a breakdown of the reactions, shares, and comments on various posts, so you can see what’s working – and what’s not.
With Insights into each post’s performance, including metrics like reach and engagements, you can get a better idea of the content that your audience enjoys the most. Then, you can use this information to improve the content creation process.
Ask a question.
Spur a conversation with an open-ended question, and you can end up with an active comments thread, shares, and more. The questions don’t need to be complicated, but they should be interesting.
For example, you might ask your followers about their opinion about a current event or trend, their favorite product from your brand, what kind of content they’d like to see, and so on. A question can even be something silly or humorous!
Respond to your audience.
You should reply if a user takes the time to comment on one of your Facebook posts. This demonstrates that your brand values followers and engagement and that their attempts to reach out aren’t going unheard.
Have a specific plan for keeping up with social media messages, comments, and other interactions. That way, you can be sure that you aren’t dropping the ball and leaving your followers with a negative impression.
Figure out the best time to post on Facebook for your brand.
According to Facebook, the algorithm rewards users that post content when their followers are online. So, you’re more likely to see good engagement if you pinpoint when your audience is online and post accordingly.
You can access this information in Facebook Insights by clicking “Posts” and “When Your Fans Are Online.” If needed, you can schedule Facebook posts with a social media management tool.
Drive traffic to your Facebook profile via outside sources.
Is it easy for people to figure out how to find your brand on Facebook? The individuals interacting with your brand on other channels, like your website, are an outstanding source of potential Facebook engagement. However, they will need to be able to easily locate your Facebook page for that to happen.
Include links to your Facebook page on your website, other social networks, and even your email signature. You can embed Facebook content directly in your blog (using a plugin) and include Facebook information on offline materials such as your business cards and packing slips.
Use Facebook Stories.
Facebook Stories are the first thing users see on their Feeds, making them a fantastic opportunity to get your audience’s attention. Stories are suited for informal, of-the-moment content, ideal for getting a bit more personal and strengthening the connection with your audience.
Add a call-to-action button on your Facebook page.
If you want users to engage, you need to offer them plenty of ways to do that. Beyond likes, shares, and comments, a call-to-action button can provide a different type of Facebook engagement option.
Your CTA button can be a one-click prompt for users to:
- Shop your products
- Book an appointment
- Contact you
- Click through to your brand website
- Download an app
- Visit your Facebook group
Resist the urge to post engagement bait.
If you’ve ever been tempted to just ask outright for likes and shares, you aren’t alone – but don’t do it! When trying to improve engagement, posts on Facebook that “bait” users will actually get you penalized by the algorithm. This type of content, known as “engagement bait,” is considered a major faux pas by Facebook and your audience alike.
Asking a genuine question, encouraging feedback, and other authentic attempts to engage are perfectly fine. But statements such as “TAG ALL YOUR FRIENDS if you want a chance to win” won’t be helpful to your long-term goals.
“Boost” your posts on Facebook.
Boosting Facebook posts is an easy way to advertise on Facebook, putting your content in front of more people with little to no effort from your end.
These posts aren’t the same as a standard Facebook ad; instead, they look just like a regular Facebook post (with the added option for a CTA button) and can appear in the Feeds of people who don’t currently follow your page. Boosted posts are available at the cost of just a few dollars, so it’s definitely one of the most affordable options for social media advertising.
Be a part of a trending conversation.
Staying on top of the latest social media trends and hashtags is a savvy way to extend your reach beyond your followers while also showing that your brand is in touch with current events. This might mean sharing content related to recent news or pop culture events or jumping in on the latest meme trends.
Of course, you’ll want to be mindful of how your audience might perceive certain topics. It’s generally a good idea to avoid divisive or controversial subjects because you certainly don’t want to go viral for all the wrong reasons.
Host a contest.
It’s no secret that people love free stuff, which is why contests and giveaways can be a fun way to get your audience excited – and engaged with – your brand. For example, you can encourage users to like or comment on a post, post on your page, or send you a message to enter a contest to win a product or service.
There are regulations for contests on Facebook, as well as rules in specific regions or countries that you’ll need to be aware of. So, do your research before making grand promises because you will ultimately be responsible for following all of the relevant rules.
Upgrade Your Facebook Strategy to Exceed Your Engagement Goals
Now, you’re armed with a great variety of tips for improving engagement on Facebook – but when you’re ready to really get serious about your social media marketing efforts, we suggest you call in the professionals.
V Digital Services is a full-service digital marketing agency with extensive experience in the field, combining our innovative approach with industry-established best practices to help businesses reach major marketing milestones. Our team has the knowledge and expertise to create tailored strategies based on your unique needs, implementing highly targeted campaigns that deliver meaningful results.
If you need help, V Digital Services is ready! Contact us today to learn how we can improve your company’s social engagement and online presence.