It is not uncommon for people to give up on due to lack of user engagement on Facebook and low conversion rates. However, cracking the ‘reaching your audience’ code isn’t that hard, and with proper guideline and easy to follow tips, you can start expecting an upward spike in the number of people who like your page. Just remember that there are almost 20,000 people active on Facebook every second. Keep this stat in mind the next time you go on a digital marketing spree, and you will surely be able to seize a chunk of your target audience.
Here are ten tips that will help you enhance user engagement for your page:
1. Create Quality Posts
Starting off with a basic tip, but this might be the most important of all. A large portion of pages on Facebook are actually considered spam thanks to low quality and unwanted posts. Contrary to the popular belief, the longer the better formula does not apply to Facebook posts. Facebook itself says that posts containing 150 – 200 characters are more likely to perform well.
2. Use Pictures and Images
Buzzsumo analyzed more than 500 million posts on Facebook and concluded that content that contains pictures and images is likely to get around 179% more interaction than content that contains no graphics. You may have heard the saying, ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’, but when we are dealing with Facebook, a picture can be worth more.
Pictures and visuals are easier to consume and take far less time to comprehend than written content. According to this report, more than 46% of digital marketers believe that photographs are a critical part of their marketing strategy. This is because words are easy to forget, but when paired with an image, people are likely to retain 65% of the information. The report therefore sheds light on why images are so important, and why they result in higher engagement. According to the same report, visuals enhance the user’s willingness to engage with the content by a whopping 80%.
However, make sure the images you post are relevant to the post and attractive to your audience. Posting a meme just for the sake of it may backfire!
3. Time your Posts
Timing is of utmost importance when making a Facebook post. What’s the point of sharing content if nobody is online to see it? Hubspot’s Dan Zarrella, in his webinar, ‘The Science of Social Timing, measured the best times your audience is present online, and determined the ideal timings to post content that resultS in higher engagement.
According to his post, the best times to share content every day are at noon and after 7pm. This information can be crucial for your business’s success, because it will help you avoid posting at odd times like 3pm when everyone is busy at work, or at 3am when everyone is fast asleep. Hence, use Dan’s guidelines to reaching out to your audience at the best timings possible.
However, there can be no hard and fast rule to this. You need to play smartly and see all your target audience. If your page is big with international fans, you will have to be more intelligent about your post timings since a large portion of your audience will be only at any given time.
4. Create Contests
Facebook allows pages to hold contests and competitions for its audience. This option is a great way to increase your overall user engagement level. If you sell products, you can hold a competition which lets the winner walk away with a free sample of one of your products. If you are in the service sector, you can offer free service to the contest winner. This is a surefire way to get your customers to talk about you and increase the visits on your page. Around 70% of big companies use this technique as a marketing strategy, and it usually works.
There are several tools like Binkd that can help you create contests on Facebook and generate more leads. You can create campaigns with those tools, and plan intelligently. The more challenging your Facebook contests, the more engagement you are likely to get in terms of comments and shares.
Some contest ideas include ‘comment the right answer’, ‘share this picture and win’, ‘share your talent’ etc. Since most people will be commenting, sharing, liking your content to win the competition, you reach will also increase allowing you to grab more attention.
5. Use Call to Action
Call to action has a dual meaning on Facebook. Originally it was intended as a call to do something accompanying every post, for example, ‘share if you agree’. With Facebook’s inclusion of a Call to Action button though, you can now have a literal button on the top of your page that urges people to engage with your business. ‘Call Now’, ‘Send an Email’ or ‘Contact Us’. are a few example of how that button can serve your needs.
CTA (Call to Action) is known to instill a psychological push in people to do what is being asked for. Therefore, a simple CTA accompanying your posts can nudge your audience to engage in some way or other. Subway, for example is famous for including a CTA with most of their posts. By posting a picture and simply adding ‘’like’ if you agree’, they are able to command a high percentage of audience engagement.
The Call to Action button integrated in your page works the same way, and encourages your audience to message you or email you in case of a question.
6. Ask Questions
Asking questions is another great way to get people to interact with your posts. Questions and fill-in-the-blank type of posts work the same way as a call to action; they urge users to engage and answer questions and fill in the blanks. A simple question begins a conversation between the business and users, and is more likely to result in a higher number of comments than other posts.
Fill in the blank posts are an underutilized tool in the social media spectrum. Not many businesses take advantage of this method. It doesn’t only help you engage your audience, it can also help you determine what your audience likes and dislikes and the opinions they carry on different matters.
Questions are likely to result in more than 162% higher interaction. However, make sure you only ask relevant questions. Do not shy away from controversy, but always choose your words carefully.
7. Use Facebook Ads
A post on the official ‘Facebook for Business’ page stated back in 2012 that the organic reach of any page was 16%. A study on Facebook’s organic reach in 2015 shows that a page with a million likes will organically reach about 2.6% of the people, a huge decline in less than 3 years. There are several reasons behind the waning of the organic virality of pages, like Facebook’s concern about only making quality content available to its users, and the huge competition for posts to appear in the New
s Feed, to name a few. Therefore, Facebook filters out what it considers spam, and only allows certain posts to reach your target audience. Hence, the need for Facebook Ads arises.
Many businesses fail to realize the importance of Facebook Ads and suffer as a result. They depend on their posts going viral for better reach, but miss out on reaching their target Using Facebook Ads however will help you grasp the right audience for your page and increase the engagement rate, because Facebook believes that businesses will only pay to promote the most important and top quality posts.
8. Frequency of your posts
A research by Buddy Media found that pages that frequented one or two posts per day have a 40% higher engagement rate than those that had multiple posts. This not only means that you should not spam your users with lots of posts in a day, but also reinforces the fact that quality is more important than quantity. Nonetheless, this largely depends on how big your page is. If you have thousands of likes, it is important to post more frequently. But, never compromise on the quality while concentrating on quantity.
In addition to the frequency, the timing again plays a vital role. It is believed that posts made on Sundays garner more engagement. In fact, users are more active on weekends, but many brands lose out on this opportunity as they’re not available online on weekends. However, this can be solved to a great extent by automating posts.
9. Make Video Content
Facebook terms video as a powerful tool in its guidelines, and states even short videos can lead to user engagement. An eye opening stat by the Buzzsumo research revealed that videos dominate the sharing game and average around 90 shares per video.
Last year saw a massive spike in the number of videos viewed, hitting 8 billion views per day by the third quarter. with Facebook releasing new numbers Facebook actually improved their video interface and the smartphone app for the social media now shows related videos with every video you click on. You can take advantage of the user’s interest in watching videos rather than reading lengths of written words, and get your engagement level on a higher ground.
10. Be Available and Responsive
Facebook is a social media platform and requires two-way communication to work properly. Your job does not end at posting content for your user base, you have to respond to all kinds of comments and feedback. You are more likely to experience better customer feedback if you answer questions and response timely.
Customers like to keep up with information through private messages as well, making it important to reply to them. Facebook now also shows the average time a business needs to respond to a message. This number is of huge importance as it signals your availability.
Vin Diesel and Cristiano Ronaldo are two celebrities that engage with fans every now and then. Starbucks is particularly active in responding to almost every fan comment, and consequently stars as the top brand on Facebook and commands huge levels of customer engagement.
When it comes to responding, you do not only have to appreciate but keep an eye on everything. Remove spam, but do not remove negative comments. Instead, respond to criticism in a positive manner. This will not only make your unhappy clients satisfied, but will also show your professionalism.
Competition is tough in the marketing arena, and Facebook is one of the biggest battlegrounds for marketers. Use the tips mentioned in this article to ensure that you stay on the top of your game and keep your audience engaged for better business returns.
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