What is Engagement?
“Engagement” on Facebook refers to the level of interaction your business page is generating with its users. This can be in the form of likes, shares, tags, or comments on your posts. Engagement isn’t a competition for generating the most likes on your content. Rather, it is a way to judge how much reach you have on any social media platform.
Why Worry About It?
The more your page engages your audience and the public, the more successful your marketing efforts on that platform are. Compared to traditional advertising, engagement is sometimes a good way of judging your customer loyalty and a cost-effective way of creating brand awareness.
According to previous U.S. statistics, American users were using Facebook for approximately 796 minutes each month, which had the highest engagement rate among all other applications. Other statistics have also shown steady Facebook usage of 37 minutes each day among US consumers in 2020 and 2021. These statistics can help understand the opportunities your business has every day to advertise itself.
Understanding Facebook Users’ Motives
Before getting into which posts create engagement, it is crucial to understand the psychology of the average Facebook user. The first thing to understand is that people use Facebook for personal reasons: to feel refreshed, take a break, to share a laugh, etc.—not to watch you sell a product. Therefore, it becomes essential to create content keeping the user’s motives in mind. Overselling can backfire and disengage your audience; nobody wants to frequently see intrusive, irrelevant ads on their news feed.
Some practices have to be adapted to maximize engagement and create opportunities for your business pages. Remember that all content is not quality content!
Strategies that Sell: Creating Engaging Posts
Now that we’ve looked into several “why” questions, it’s time to look at ”how” we can achieve the desired level of engagement and reach. Here are some tried-and-tested strategies that can help you win:
Avoid Posting Too Much
While it may seem tempting to keep sharing and re-sharing content to “maintain” steady visibility on your users’ news feed, it’s not a good idea. “Oversharing” is another way of spamming news feeds and may annoy your followers and encourage them to “un-follow” you on Facebook.
Logistically speaking, sharing several posts a day can mean you’re compromising on content quality because wholesome content is rarely found in such abundance!
Post When Your Followers are Online
Remember that the Facebook algorithm is determined to show consumers as much content as possible. But if you have a loyal following and an established routine for posting content, that might help your content find a place on the news feed.
You can ensure, however, to post content when your followers are most expected to be online. This may require some research into your audience’s Facebook data. Facebook Insights can help you gather this data.
You should also post content in terms of relevance. For example, your business just announced the launch of a new product line; it’s best to follow up quickly, introducing your users to the products and their details.
Use Video Content
Video content is statistically more engaging than any other type of content on social media.
People spend three times as much time on video content, according to Adweek.
Studies and analyses have shown how popular channels engage their followers successfully through videos; these channels include Buzzfeed and Tasty.
Video content comes in many types and is ideally kept short to inform, engage, and develop the readers’ interest all at once.
You should understand in detail how well your Facebook videos perform to analyze and compare them with other content types yourself.
Go Live
Going live is a great way to engage your users because they are likely to get their questions and concerns answered in real-time. This is an excellent opportunity to build a rapport with your audience and can even serve as a gateway to continued engagement on your next posts. It conveys that the business is very much alive and interested in its followers’ well being and is not just there to mint money.
This is something that creates warmth and a two-way understanding between people and businesses. Plus, as humans, we all like to know and interact with faces like our own. It gives a sense of comfort knowing people rather than faceless “businesses.”
Share Content Someone Else Created
This might sound counterintuitive at first. After all, why would a business offer free promotion?
However, if you are a new business and you want to establish credibility or increase your reach, you can follow this tactic. Sharing the content of more significant, credible organizations can help you reach more people initially.
Another kind of curated content you can share is content created by your consumers. This should automatically serve as a review or testimony to your product’s quality and simultaneously allow you to reach a broader audience.
Ask for Opinions
Asking for opinions is directly asking your audience to engage in your posts. This may be anything from asking opinions about a particular concept or idea related to your business. If you’re writing a blog, you can ask for your readers’ views or thoughts on it. This kind of engagement depends entirely on your audience; let’s say you have a lifestyle business, you can engage and ask for opinions on relevant topics.
This makes the audience feel that they have a say and are actively involved with your business.
However, in doing this, you must be careful about engagement baits. These Facebook posts have no meaning and are only meant to create a series of likes, comments, etc. This is a spamming strategy that Facebook is fighting; such posts will be demoted.
Consider this example, “Tag a friend so he can open his phone to look at this taco for no reason.” This is an example of engagement bait.
Another thing to remember when asking for opinions is to reply to your followers. Having their responses acknowledged will give them more incentive to engage next time on other posts.
Engaging Boosted Posts
Posts that are mainly designed to generate engagement should be boosted. Boosting a post on Facebook means paying a small fee to reach a more targeted audience. This function also allows you to access your metrics for the post, and you can analyze how well your post performed and gain insights into your audience. This knowledge may later benefit you when you post more content.
Get Yourself A Facebook Group
Facebook groups can be linked to your page to create and maximize engagement. You can use that group to build a steady group of followers, like a small community. The group can also be used to create awareness or educate people about your brand.
Additionally, you can also join groups on Facebook to become a part of a greater community and expand your reach.
Promote Content Across Social Media Channels
If you have pages on other social media channels such as Twitter or Instagram, try funnelling the content on Facebook to those platforms as well. Maybe your followers on Twitter or Instagram are utterly unaware of your existence on Facebook. This will ensure that your loyal audience is secured on all platforms.
Try Giveaways
Giveaways can be an excellent way to promote your service or product. Who doesn’t like a gift? Your audience is only expected to help you extend your reach by tagging, sharing or commenting under your posts to be awarded a gift. This costs your followers nothing and creates a feeling of competition and liveliness. Also, it is cost-effective for you as a business to get notices by more and more people.
Giveaways must be timely rewarded and shared on your feed to ensure your audience of their validity.
Ideally, a giveaway can be a product or service that you offer in the first place. You can also ask the winners to review the product or services they received as a prize. Again helping you generate honest reviews that help you boost your credibility.
Takeaway
To summarize, Facebook is an excellent medium to promote your business; people like spending time on it. You are likely to find your audience through various data and analytics that the platform has to offer. However, executing a successful marketing strategy will require gaining insights into your audience and will need regular and consistent efforts regarding the content you publish. Engaging your audience will require a more human touch and must incorporate your users’ motives. It must also reward your users for keeping the conversation going.
If you want to benefit more and utilize Facebook to create a loyal following, look no further. Mediaforce is an award-winning marketing agency that will help you achieve your social media marketing goals.
