When utilised effectively, Facebook is one the most valuable platforms for marketing your products and services and connecting with your customers. The level of engagement your page has is a good indicator of whether you are on the right track with your social media strategy. High engagement is indicative of content which is interesting, relevant and well-timed to your target audience. This, in turn, will help you grow your brand awareness and build a community of loyal customers. These 5 tips to increase Facebook engagement really work and can help you whether you’re just getting started or want to take your page to the next level.
1. Schedule your posts for when your followers are most active
You may have great content to share, but if hardly anyone sees it then your engagement will remain low. Scheduling your posts for when your followers are most active online is one of the simplest ways to increase your Facebook engagement. Use Facebook Insights to determine the times when your followers are most active online. Whilst is true that there are times when people are generally more active on Facebook, it’s best to do your own analysis as the best times for you will vary depending on the nature of your business, where your particular followers are located and the times they tend to be more active online. You can then schedule posts in advance to go out during these times, either directly through Facebook or using scheduling software. Scheduling in advance is a great way to help you plan the best content to share and when to share it for maximum engagement and reach.
The below screenshot is from a Facebook pages insights. Go to Insights – Posts (on the left hand side). The graph shows which days have the most followers online, so this page has slightly more on a Tuesday than any other day and midday is the best time to post. These times will change slightly depending on what’s going on, this screenshot was taken during the throes of COVID – prior to this the best times were between 6pm and 10pm, so it pays to revisitt this page if society has any great changes.
2. Focus on quality over quantity
Nobody wants to be spammed online by any individual or business – it’s one of the fastest ways to annoy people and lose followers. When planning your content, be sure to focus on quality over quantity. When posting many times each day, it’s difficult to consistently find great content to share and so the quality naturally diminishes. Focus on one or two posts per day, as a general rule, and be varied in the type of content you share. For example, you may want to find the best news piece relevant to your industry each day and share this, but ensure another other post is something different such as a funny meme, an interesting video, a promotional post etc. Mix up your content throughout the week to keep your followers engaged as people quickly become bored with repetitive and stale content. Try to keep your content as visual as possible as this has been shown to appeal to people much more than written content, with video even easier to digest.
3. Make your posts relevant to your followers
This ties into the previous tip. People will be much less likely to engage with your Facebook posts if most of your content is self-serving. People do not follow businesses to be advertised to 24/7. Your content should be fan-centric, designed to appeal to your followers and their interests rather than to directly sell your products and services. Whilst you will want to share promotional posts sometimes, and this is fine, ensuring the majority of your posts are relevant to your followers will boost engagement and therefore indirectly lead to more sales. Share content relating to real-world events, things of interest to your audience and posts which provide relevant information or help them solve problems. Content that makes people laugh is always a winner. You should aim to understand your followers and build your content around them, rather than your business.
4. Analyse your content over time
Analysing your Facebook content over time is essential as it helps to give you a picture of your best performing posts, which you can then use to tailor your content in the future. Look at the posts that got the most engagement, in the form of likes, comments and shares, and try to understand why this was. Was it a funny meme, a controversial news piece or an interesting case study, for example? You can use these insights to try to recreate the magic and consistently boost your engagement over time. If you notice that some types of content always have low engagement, consider reducing the amount of this you post or eliminating it altogether to make space for something more impactful. Learn from your mistakes and successes. If you are a new business or just starting out on Facebook, take a look at your competitor’s pages, notice which posts of theirs get the most engagement and use this to inform your own social media strategy. The best social media insights we have seen are on the scheduling platform . They provide visually simple to digest analytics for all the major social media channels, as well as allowing you to plan and schedule content. The picture below demonstrates one of the reports we send our customers through Sprout Social.
5. Interact with your followers
One of the easiest ways to increase Facebook engagement is to try and encourage interaction with your posts by including subtle call to actions. This is easily done by tacking a question onto your posts which encourage people to comment or have a discussion. This gives your followers a voice and lets them know you want to hear from them. Try to steer clear of excessively using overt call to actions, such as begging for likes or shares, as this could harm the reach of your posts and deter engagement. If you are posting great content, people will naturally like and share it.
Be sure to keep up with any comments your posts receive and prioritise replies. If people take the time to leave a comment, you should try to always return the favour with a timely response. People want to interact with brands, so making the time to acknowledge interactions with replies will boost your engagement long-term. People expect businesses to be on the ball and respond within a short time frame so keeping up with this will really boost the credibility of your brand and keep your followers on side.
If you feel like you could benefit from more assistance with your social media we provide a Social Media strategy plan, or full social media management.
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