Steps to Increase Facebook Engagement in 2021
Facebook Is One Of The Best Platform Getting Quick Sales, Increase Your Engagement, And Growing Your Business Fast.
With over 2.4 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the most important social media channel for many businesses and a key component of their digital marketing strategies.
But growing your organic reach can be a challenge on any platform — Facebook, with its dynamically changing algorithms, is no exception.
What is Facebook engagement?
Facebook engagement is a collective term for all of the ways Facebook users interact with your Facebook Page. The most common types of engagement include likes and other reactions (Haha, Love, Wow, etc.) to posts as well as comments and shares. Page mentions, posts added to your page, or even checking into your location, however, also count towards your total engagement.
Facebook engagement is any action someone takes on your posts, so:
- Likes
- Comments
- Clicks
- Shares
- Video Views
…and so on will count as engagement.
Why is engagement so important?
First of all, it shows how well you communicate with your audience. Regardless of what KPIs you define for your social strategy, it’s safe to assume you’re not driving great results if your Facebook activity doesn’t trigger your community’s engagement. You can hardly expect a high ROI from your Facebook campaigns if your audience simply doesn’t care about what you put out there.
High engagement is also a great way to organically grow your Page’s reach. When users engage with your content, their contacts see that action in their feeds. This means that by focusing on making your Facebook presence engaging, you will be able to tap into an audience larger than just your fan count and reach potential new customers.
Create Engage-Worthy Content
Want to know what’s not engaging?
Filling up your Facebook page with posts that have nothing to do with your audience and everything to do with your business. We see this a lot with small businesses. They create Facebook pages and start posting about how cool their business is and then they realize that it’s still just their family and friends that follow them. Facebook prioritizes posts that spark conversations and meaningful interactions with people.
So you need to post content that pertains to the interests and goals of your audience if you want to engage them — even if that does not directly promote your business. Because remember, you’re competing for attention on Facebook first and foremost. Once you have attention on a consistent basis, you can start promoting to your audience to monetize it. But until then, you need to post content that grabs attention. You need a hook that grabs people’s attention. You need a message that is authentic and relevant.
And, you need eye-catching images or videos that make people want to stop scrolling and digest your content.
Teach, entertain, inform, or inspire
Your Facebook audience is not looking for a sales pitch, and they’re certainly not going to engage with one.
They want to engage with content that will make them smile, make them think, or improve their lives in some way.
Stuff Dutch People Like does a great job of informing non-Dutch folks (including the Netherlands’ huge ex-pat population) about Dutch culture while also making people laugh.
Check out the engagement numbers on this informative but entertaining post: 1,300 likes and more than 1,000 shares
Get to know your audience
What you find entertaining or inspiring is not relevant.
When you’re seeking engagement, it’s your audience’s wants and needs that matter.
And it’s tricky to understand what those wants and needs are unless you really understand who your audience is.
Facebook Page Insights provides a ton of useful information about your audience. Study this information carefully, and look for any unexpected details that could help you create a more meaningful connection with fans.
Terre Bleu lavender farm used Page Insights to research their audience and determine what kind of content their fans respond to most. They learned that customers liked informative content like recipes, as well as gorgeous photos of the lavender fields. They generally saw less engagement for posts about environmental issues.
Using that knowledge, they used a photo of the lavender field bursting with yellow dandelion blooms to talk about an issue they cared about — the importance of bees. It turned into one of their most-engaging posts, with nearly 1,000 shares.
Keep it short
The vast majority of people use Facebook mobile devices — a whopping 88 percent of them.
Facebook’s data shows that people scrolling through News Feed on their mobile devices spend just 1.7 seconds to consume an item of content.
Even people browsing on a computer only spend 2.5 seconds per content item.
The good news is that people can recall content after seeing it for just 0.25 seconds. But you need to act fast to get their attention.
Keep your post short and sweet to capture attention quickly and entice users to stop scrolling and engage.
Focus on quality
With people moving through content quickly, there’s no time for sub-par graphics, videos or text.
If you’re running out of original content to post, content curation can be a great way to share quality, informative content that gets your audience excited.
Quality doesn’t have to be complicated, or expensive. In fact, Facebook recommends keeping things simple with a consistent color scheme and recognizable images.
Use (great) images
Facebook posts that include a photo see higher-than-average engagement rates. Simple shots work well. Facebook suggests a product close-up or a customer photo.
You don’t need a fancy camera or photography equipment — your mobile phone is all you need to get started.
Ali Maffucci of Inspiralized uses foam board covered in contact paper to fake the look of a marble countertop for her Facebook photos. She shoots on her mobile phone, with a small tripod.
. Ask a question
An interesting question is a great way to kick off an active comments thread. Here are some ideas to get you started.
- How do you [complete this action]?
- Why do you [like this event or brand]?
- Do you agree with [a notable statement, event, person, etc.]?
- What’s your favorite [fill in the blank]?
You could also ask fans for information about what kind of content they want to see from you. Then, give them what they ask for. This targeted content will inspire even more engagement.
As people answer your question, don’t forget to…
Interact With Your Followers
No one likes sending someone a message and being left on “read.”Don’t leave the people who are engaging with your business on “read.” Interact with them.
Your interactions and responses will also contribute to your post’s engagement.
And it might also encourage further dialogue and discussion, thus leading to more engagement on your Facebook post.
So don’t sit back and say, “Oh, cool I got 5 comments,” and leave it at that.
Get in the game, interact with the people who are engaging with you, and build relationships with your audience.
Post Native Content & Keep People on Facebook
Why would Facebook show your post in the news feed if it takes people off Facebook?
Their entire business model is based on people spending as much time on their platform as possible.
With that said, you’re likely not going to increase your engagement by including links in every single post or promoting your YouTube page.
It is proven that native content performs best in Facebook’s algorithm.
Native content is content that is created solely for the purpose of the platform it is consumed on,
So for example, if you have video content, you should upload your video directly into Facebook and share it through their platform.
Doing this will get far more engagement than simply sharing a link to YouTube, taking people off Facebook, and sending them to their BIGGEST competitor.
Likewise, instead of linking to an article, take the major takeaways of that article.
Then, split it up into a series of social media posts that can be digested on Facebook instead of an external website.
Doing this will keep people on Facebook longer, and also help you break through their algorithm to increase your Facebook engagement.
