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Engagement is at the heart of social media marketing. Facebook prioritizes which posts to show higher in News Feed based on the quality of engagement around them. Posts that spark meaningful interactions among users and prompt shares and reactions get to rank higher in Feed.
With over 2 billion daily active Facebook users, your target market is definitely on the platform. To convert them into paying customers, you need to engage them in ways that will move them to take action.
Below, we take a look at seven (7) ways you can boost engagement on your Facebook business page, but first,
What is Facebook Engagement?
Facebook engagement refers to the depth and quality of actions, reactions, and interactions people have with your posts like likes, shares, comments, etc. It also measures the level of relevance and involvement people have with your posts.
With social first, Facebook is prioritizing social interactions above business posts even as user activity keeps increasing. Successful businesses and marketers are those who know how to navigate this fine line.
7 Creative Ways to Boost Facebook Business Page Engagement
1. Identify What’s Working and Do More of It
Often, businesses are more concerned with creating new posts than studying the trends around existing ones. To have an understanding of the types of posts that generate the highest engagement for your business, you should regularly evaluate the performance of your older posts.
Equally important is to fully understand of all the formats, the placements, and the creative specs best practices on Facebook, which is all readily available at this Facebook Specs Guide. All you need to know via this comprehensive website!
The Page Insights tab on your Facebook page, meanwhile, provides detailed analytics of all your activities. You can find out when your audience is most active online, and which posts generated the most buzz, shares, and comments. This information will be useful in preparing your content, so you can create more of the top-performing posts.
Insight about the actions people take on your page, whether they are clicking on your call-to-action button or the link to your website, will help you tailor your page to get your audience to take just the actions you want.
2. Post Videos
Facebook posts that get the highest engagement have one thing in common – they grab attention. When it comes to grabbing attention, video rules. According to the BuzzSumo Facebook data study for 2018 which analyzed over 700 million posts, video posts attract the most engagement.
If the thought of making Facebook videos intimidates you, bear in mind that engagement is the objective, not necessarily quantity or length. The hack is to find entertaining ways to engage your audience on topics relevant to your business.
Shorter videos of between 3 and 4 minutes were found to attract the highest engagement. If you must post longer videos, ensure that your call to action is clear within the first sixty seconds.
3. Invest in Quality Images
According to Brandwatch, 350 million photos are uploaded daily on Facebook. In plain English, there are millions of photos competing for user attention. The implication is that your images have to stand out.
Custom high-quality images are your best bet at engaging your audience because they give your posts a unique feel. However, if you must use stock photos, be sure to edit them and add a branded touch before posting.
Any texts placed on images should be legible and give your audience some clues about the entire post. Be consistent with your color and overall styling. Follow the Facebook image sizes guide to avoid image pixelation on some devices.
4. Keep Text Posts Short and Scannable
Text-only posts generally get far less engagement than videos and images. Since your goal is to boost engagement, your posts should always include videos or images. If you must make a text-only post, keep it short and straight to the point.
For longer posts, use lots of spaces and one-sentence paragraphs so viewers can scan them and catch the drift without having to actually read them.
5. Use Emojis to Express Emotions
To drive even more engagement, sprinkle your posts with emojis. Emojis lighten the tone of your posts and make your brand come across as friendly. According to this sunglasses emoji guide. “Emojis in a Facebook post can increase the number of likes by 57 percent and the number of comments and shares by 33 percent.”
6. Use Questions, Surveys, and Polls
Question posts have the second-highest engagement, even higher than images, according to the BuzzSumo 2018 study. The direct and personal feel to questions makes this possible. When you use questions and other related types of posts like surveys and polls, your audience feel you value them enough to seek their opinions and are more likely to engage with your posts.
Overall, surveys have more formal tones and are used, for example, when you want to find out how your audience will take a slight increase in the price of your product or what they think about your brand. Polls, on the other hand, are a bit less formal. An aviation brand, for instance, can take a poll asking their audience if they’d fly the brand for their next holidays.
7. Learn from Your Competition
Keeping an eye on the pages of businesses similar to yours can offer you insights and help you develop strategies to boost engagement on your own page. For example, if the posts on a business page with a lookalike audience as yours always spark engagement, you can get ideas for your own posts from there.
Observe the type and format of the content (whether it is written content, live or pre-recorded videos, animations, or images), the length and tone of the content, and the posting frequency.
Conclusion
Granted, maintaining an engaged following on Facebook is harder these days. But it can be done. Invest in high-quality content that is in sync with your messaging. Stick to post types that are proven to work — short videos, photos, surveys, and polls.
Although following the steps above is a good way to start, nothing beats testing and evaluating your own results. Review your Facebook Page Insights regularly and change your approach based on your inferences. No matter what, don’t be afraid to experiment.
Author Bio
Amos Onwukwe is an AWAI trained Business and Ecommerce Copywriter. When not writing, he’s thinking about writing or making music. He’s been featured in Huffington Post, Dumb Little Man, Ecommerce Nation, eCommerce Insights, Understanding Ecommerce, Result First, Floship, GrowMap, among others. You can connect with him on
Twitter: @amos_onwukwe
LinkedIn: Amos Onwukwe
