So your company or organization is on Facebook. You know how to make a post and want to engage prospective consumers and clients, and you know your goals. Great! But now what? How do you gain engagement on Facebook for your page?
It’s no surprise that Facebook is one of the biggest social media platforms today. There are over 2.79 billion users, making it an avoidable part of everyday life. On top of it being a popular social network, Facebook is utilized by businesses to sell products and services. Even freelance workers have set up shop on the site to market themselves.
Facebook has a lot of personal information about its users. Because of this, it’s a marketers’ goldmine for best targeting your desired audience. For someone who seeks to grow their online presence, Facebook is probably your best bet. However, increasing the number of engagements you get can be a difficult task at first.
Here are some ways to increase your Facebook engagement in a simple, yet, effective means.
Types of Facebook engagements: what are you looking for?
When monitoring engagement on Facebook, consider the different types of engagements and what they mean. Ideally, you should plan a variety of these posts on your content calendar. Be sure to not be repetitive in your posting in order to not grow bland to your audience.
Reactions/Likes: These are your basic reactions to posts. This basically means someone acknowledged your post and liked it enough to react to it instead of continuing to scroll. You can even ask users to leave a specific reaction in a response to a question.
Comments: Creating posts that are designed for users to comment on posts is a great way to add engagement. Create polls, ask questions, or ask users to tag a friend or share a photo in the comments.
Shares: Shares help expose other people to your posts. Making posts shareable, creating content people want to share, is one of the best strategies in increasing engagement and exposure.
All of these engagements will help a person or page increase their social media audience. To some users, the number of likes or shares indicates the quality of that page’s posts.
Take advantage of holidays
One of the easiest ways to make an engaging post for a Facebook page is to greet your audience during a holiday. This does not mean just typing in “Merry Christmas” and hoping for many likes and shares. Make it personal by adding in an aesthetically pleasing image graphic with a creative caption. Think of what your audience needs or wants to hear.
Also, take advantage of nontraditional holidays. Using online calendars like National Day Calendar Can help you discover new and fun holidays to create interactive posts. For example, for national dog day, you can post something like “Happy National Dog Day! Comment below with a picture of your four-legged friend!”
If you aim for a more religious audience, you can even include a quote from the Bible and relate it to the holiday at hand. But if you’re reaching a younger audience, you may want to zone in on the festivities. Talk about things like spending time with friends, family, and significant others. Lean into what makes that holiday a special or fun one.
Create witty and relatable content
The key to increasing engagement is creating content to which your audience can relate.
For example, a sixteen-year-old is more likely to identify with a pun about Olivia Rodrigo’s “Driver’s License” than a reference to Bruce Springsteen. Know what your audience wants, and use it to your advantage. Posts that talk about trendy topics are likely to get engagements.
Memes are another thing that you can use on your page. However, make sure that the templates you use are current. Nobody uses trollface or Impact font memes in 2021. Be immersed with the latest meme templates on social media and craft content that is not try too hard. Many pages find success in going viral through this route.
Ask questions or hold challenges
Try asking your audience a question at least once a week. This encourages users to interact with your post and share it on their page. Sharing can lead to a domino effect, increasing the number of engagements that the post receives. If people enjoy the prompt, they will keep on answering it through comments or reactions. They may even do so for an extended amount of time, especially if the prompt is universally applicable.
Creating challenges is another engagement tactic. These may be in the form of “tag yourself” games or bingo cards. It will help if you can use a well-designed template for challenges. Challenges may also be done through video and can take the form of dances or spoken words.
Schedule posts ahead
When it comes to planning posts, it’s best to consider the days and times your audience is most engaged. You have to post at specific periods to ensure that it does not get buried in a very busy news feed. Typically, 8:00 pm is an excellent time to schedule posts.
Some social media scheduling tools worth using are:
- Facebook publishing tools: Free and built into Facebook.
- Hootsuite: Helps you plan and publish posts for multiple social media channels at once, making in a convenient option
- Later: Best known for publishing Instagram posts, but can be used for Facebook as well. This has both free and premium options. It’s similar to Hootsuite but preferred for some users.
Use Facebook Insights
Facebook Insights helps you monitor the growth of a page. This function shows the likes, shares, and reactions in a neatly organized way. It can help you identify which online marketing tools to keep using and which ones to throw out in favor of other alternatives. Facebook Insights can also show you when to best post new content.
Some data to look for in Facebook Insights:
- Audience demographics
- Popular times your audience is on Facebook
- Top performing and worst performing posts
It’s imperative to continually audit your Facebook posts. You can create monthly Facebook audits using Excel or Google sheets and keep track of each post, times posted, and how well it performed. Tracking data about posts helps you learn what your audience engages with most so you know what type of content to create more or less of.
Take advantage of Facebook Live
Facebook has joined other social media giants in having a live function. This feature allows users to broadcast themselves in real-time. If you are a new start-up who wants to show the world their products, then a Facebook live may be one of the best ways to do so. Streams are also sharable, which means users enjoying the live video may help others see it.
There are a lot of things you can do on Facebook Live. You can make a vlog-type scenario where you talk about your day, or if you want to showcase a business, you can talk about a topic related to your industry. Remember to market your live stream to the intended target audience.
The Bottom Line
In the end, increasing Facebook engagement is going to take some time and creativity. Increasing engagements is not going to be easy at first. However, coming up with ways to be more noticed on the website can be a lot of fun.
At the end of the day, you know your audience best. You get to plan what types of games or challenges to post regularly. You can even use your knowledge of popular culture and memes. The possibilities are honestly endless, but you have to know your audience and target market.
If you are looking for more tips or trips in increasing your social media engagement, check out more of our posts on the PGN blog.