7 Ways To Increase Your Facebook Engagement

Engaging on Facebook is one of the best ways to grow your Facebook fan base. The more activity on your page, the more people will be talking about you and the more you will attract.

Facebook engagement is created through likes, shares, and comments. Here are seven ways to create highly engaging posts for your brand.

1.    Photos

A picture is the simplest way to catch someone’s attention. Bright, clear, inspiring pictures are always well received and shared. For more on how photos can increase your Facebook engagement, check out our blog entry A Picture Is Worth 1,000 Likes.

2.    Show The Human Side Of Your Business

Likes do not equal loyalty – in other words, just because people like your Facebook fan page does not mean they are your friends. Friends engage with friends, so engage! Find out who they are and what they like by asking fun “daily life” questions that encourage simple answers.

• -What are you doing this weekend?
• -Did you see any great concerts over the summer?
• -Superman or Spiderman?
• -Which do you like better – blueberry pie or apple pie?

3.    Comment and Share Posts

Select, comment on and share interesting posts by other fan pages. When you make a witty comment on another’s post you are engaging them and their fans.

Try to get the comment in early. When something is posted, it is fresh. People will read the first few comments below a post, but if there are hundreds of comments they could miss yours.

Commenting on posts creates awareness of your page on another Facebook page with a relevant audience. Always check back a few minutes later to see if anyone commented on or liked your comment.

Sharing posts is a great way to encourage other fan pages to reciprocate and share one or more of your posts.

4.    Thank and Reward Your Fans

Fans love to be recognized and appreciated. When you show them you care, you begin to build stronger rapport and fan loyalty. Here are a few suggestions:

• -Post a picture with accompanying text such as “Thank You!” or “Our fans are the best!”
• -Spotlight a Fan of the Month
• -Use third-party apps such as Bamboo (www.bambooengine.com), which rewards fans for spreading the word about your brand.

5.    Host Fun Contests and Giveaways

Contests bring in more fans to engage and excite your current fan base. It’s best to run both small weekly giveaways and larger, more involved monthly contests.  A couple of suggestions:

• -Host a fan-based photo contest or caption contest with a small prize. Fans love the game even more than the prize and also like sharing their photos. Create a fan photo album from the entries and tell your fans to tag themselves in the photos. This will then show up on their wall.
• -Check out Appforma (http://www.appforma.com) for amazing, easy-to-set-up contest apps.

 6.    Sponsored Posts

Due to Facebook’s newly imposed EdgeRank system, sponsored posts, aka promoted posts, are more essential than ever. EdgeRank is described as “an algorithm that decides which stories appear in each user’s newsfeed. The algorithm hides boring stories, so if your story doesn’t score well, no one will see it.”  Posting highly engaging content is one way to work the algorithm, but the only way to ensure your post will hit all your fans‘ timelines is to promote it. To learn more about sponsored / promoted posts click here.

7.    Evaluate Content Performance

Review your Facebook-provided page insights and evaluate what content is best-received by your audience. You can find your posts’ reach, number of engaged users, how many people are talking and virality under the Overview section in your Facebook Insights.  Continue to do more of what is working and take it a step further.