Looking for proven ways of getting more Facebook engagement? Read on, this article will help you spur engagement with your target audience. Facebook made it official at the beginning of last year (2018) that they had made some serious changes on their ranking algorithm by making it more centered on building relationships and online interactions.
Their colossal ranking system, instead of haphazardly displaying posts like it’s being doing from the onset, would now be prioritizing on posts that spark conversations and bump-start meaningful interactions between online connects.
So unless your post is friendly and engaging enough to get your friends and followers to directly engage with it, then there’s a higher possibility the new algorithm will be pushing it further down the news feed in favor of more engaging posts.
Consequently, the days when brands could fill our timelines with stilt posts in the name of looking professional are way behind us. And while a small few of social media marketers are still misguided on this one simple approach, Facebook made it clear in their recent algorithm update that they’ll be ranking posts based on their engagement rate — and NOT as per their level of professionalism as some people love to assume.
What’s Facebook Engagement?
Every time a person or brand makes an update of their page or Facebook account, the post is automatically displayed to some of their followers. More often than NOT, a good number of the followers may see the post but instead choose to ignore it. What follows is the new Facebook algorithm registering the post view as 1 reach.
But just in case the person seeing the post decides to like, comment, or share it around, the algorithm will instead count it as an engagement.
So essentially, Facebook engagement goes on to show that the underlying person has interacted with your post in one way or another by either liking, commenting, or sharing it around.
Facebook is more concerned about engagement rates because it helps to stretch out your organic reach. It’s through engagement that your post stands the chance to go viral or be viewed by as many people as possible.
A highly engaging post will therefore enjoy a prime News Feed placement as opposed to a stilt post will little to NO engagement stones.
Also, when your follows get to share, like or comment on a post you make, your brand is automatically exposed to new people, which translates to extra exposure on your part.
Lastly, a good engagement score goes on to show that your brand in doing a better job in understanding their prospects. With the information you get from the little interaction you have with potential customers and clients, you can make necessary adjustments to your marketing campaign and even figure out possible ways to improve on the quality of your products or services for the better.
Sound Tips for Increasing Your Facebook Engagement Rate:
Strive to Teach, Inform, Inspire and Entertain
It’s simple logic – imagine yourself as an average Facebook user. So you visit the platform and all you get to see are overtly promotional posts on you news feed. This happens a couple of times and the platform ceases to be that amazing.
Good thing is that Facebook is always ahead of time with their thinking. They wised up to this long time ago; and since their plan has always been to get majority of the users registered aboard hooked to the platform, they figured they shifted their algorithm around in favor of more engaging posts – and which comes at the expense of those with zero entertaining, educating, informing and inspiring value.
As you can see, Facebook is more lopsided towards posts that make their users smile, think or improve their lives in one way or another. And, as a marketer looking to lock in sales, unless you learn to calibrate the message you create to be in line with this pattern, you can always expect them to be pushed further down in your followers’ news feed – never to be seen or read.
Understand Your Audience
Not all Facebook audiences are the same. What’s entertaining, informative or inspiring to a particular audience may NOT be the same to another type of audience. What’s important is for you to understand your type of audience and how best you can target them through the posts you make. Start with you understanding their needs, wants, and preferences.
You can do this by checking your page insights. Here, you’ll be provided with loads of information regarding your audience. Study the information provided more carefully, digging in for details that could help you figure out a better way of connecting with your followers and fans.
Find out about the type of content your audience is most excited about. Do they love recipes? How-to guides? Or pictures of what it is you’re involved with?
Be Succinct
Facebook is full of lazy readers – considering majority of them (a whopping 88% of the people on the platform) access it via a mobile device.
According to the latest social media statistic release, an average Facebook users accessing the platform via a mobile device only has about 1.7 second to ingest the content you post, with those accessing it on a desktop or laptop spending about 2.5 seconds on it. Out of this, the first 0.25 seconds will be used to scan a piece of content to find out if it’s really interesting to continue reading or if is boring enough to be nexted.
So instead of focusing on coming up with lengthy posts, use that time to put your creativity into good use by making your posts short and sweet instead.
Focus On Quality
Don’t create content for the sake of having something to post. With Facebook, you certainly have NO room for fluff or subpar texts, graphics or video content.
Well, if your creativity is lacking the juice to come up with valuable original posts, then consider content curation. Speaking of which, your readers don’t really care if your content has been pulled off someone else’s account or page, so long as they find it valuable and interesting.
It’s also important that you don’t overthink the whole approach. Don’t try to complicate stuff or take an expensive approach while at it. If you can get into the mind of your targeted reader and see value in whatever you’re about to post, then you clearly get the concept.
Use Quality Images Where Applicable
It’s been established that Facebook posts that happen to feature quality images have much better engagement rates. While the quality of your photos matters a great deal as far as user engagement goes, Facebook suggests that you try to keep the shots simple by focusing on close-up images of your products.
You don’t necessarily need to splurge on a fancy camera and other expensive photography equipment – your mobile phone is enough to get you on track.
Here’s one trick you could bite:
To take up-close photos of your products, try using foam board covered in a contact paper to create the idea of a marble countertop. You’d be surprised by how clear your photos comes off to a point that you’ll have a hard time convincing other people that you actually used your mobile phone to take the shots.
Make a Live Broadcast or Video
Videos have been noted for seeing an ever higher engagement rate compared to photos. Also, as with photography, you don’t have to break a bank to come up with really engaging videos for your online followers.
Registering the highest engagement rate of all are live broadcasts – with six times more engagements compared to regular videos.
For more screen real estate, you might want to consider taking vertical videos, unless otherwise.
All you have to do is come up with convincing reasons to go online. It could be because there’s a new product you wish to launch or you have a new how-to guide of which you want to walk your online followers. Whichever case, you’ll never completely run out of ideas to go live.
Post a Query
Nothing is more engaging than asking a question and waiting for your followers to respond. The point is to spark an active thread, where your followers will be going back and forth airing their views and opinions and responding to each other in a friendly manner.
Here are some question ideas you might want to consider:
- What are the steps involved in completing this action?
- What’s your opinion regarding our brand or any of the products in our pipeline?
- Do you agree with a statement someone made concerning our brand, product, or service? If so or NOT, what’s you take about it?
- What’s your favorite version of a product we sell?
Respond to all the comments
No one likes to be ignored, and your followers aren’t an exception in this.
Provided someone takes their time to write down a comment, then it behooves you to reach back with a response on the very least.
If the comments are too many, get a team of active Singapore social media managers to help you out. It’s however important that train them beforehand on how you’d wish to see them respond to the replies your followers leave behind.
If you’re using Facebook messenger, then your goal should be to try and get a ‘Very Responsive’ badge.
It’s a Wrap
Amid doing all of this, it’s also important that you consider boosting some of the posts you publish. This will get your content to an even bigger crowd, thus increasing the number of people that get to engage with it by the end of it all.
For help, inquiries and outsourcing, you’re hereby invited to reach out to MediaOne today for a free SEO and Facebook engagement consultation in Singapore.
