Day Three: How to Increase Facebook Engagement
Day One: How to Attract New Fans
Day Two: How to Connect & Retain your Fans
Day Three: How to Increase Facebook Engagement
Day Four: How to WOW Your Fans
Day Five: Facebook Fan-Page No-nos; What to Avoid
Now that we have learned to attract new fans and Connect with those fans, we want to take a look at engagement, and keeping your fans active on your Facebook Business Page. There are so many different techniques out there to increase engagement, but I am going to just delve into what works for me!
Strategy #1: Be what they Love
When you post something about your business, you want it to look like it “belongs” in your newsfeed. Hardcore advertising has shown to seem as though its “interrupting” a newsfeed, and this is something you want to avoid. So what would be an example of this? Lets say you sell purses. Instead of “Buy one get one free today only!” Post a picture of the purse by your feet and say, THIS IS MY FAVORITE PURSE! It matches my shoes! Buy one Get one today only!” This helps keep your post personable and relate-able. We talked a little bit about this yesterday!
Strategy #2: Share Pictures
Statistics show that posts with pictures get shared the most. So this means, that when you are posting images on your page it is attracting more eyes. We want this, because we want them to engage with that picture. We want them to do the BIG THREE: Like, Comment, Share. This helps increase organic reach, because when their friends see them liking or sharing pages, you are reaching that many more people!
Tips for Photos
- Make them real, and candid. When you post your own photos, ore photos that are close to home people are more likely to relate with them. Everyone can detect a stock photo, so try to avoid those at all costs.
- Go behind the Scenes: I am going to share my own example here. Sometimes I will ask my clients to take pictures of me photographing their High School Senior. I know they are doing it anyway, but then I will ask them to send those to me so I can share those on my page! Then people see that there is a person behind the picture!
- Post Inspiring Quotes: We all know that we can find millions of inspiring quotes on Facebook & Pinterest. Take it a step further and design your own. Not a designer? Hire your designer to do it. Pick out a list of 10 favorite quotes and ask your designer to create a graphic for you to display on facebook that has your logo or symbol from your business. Quotes are very popular on Facebook. You will almost ALWAYS find someone who can relate to your quote, and they are more likely to share it, increasing fan engagement!
Strategy #3: Ask for the Sale
If you are in sales, you know this strategy pretty well. We are going to relate this back to your business page. When you post a picture, ASK them to share it. However, avoid posting low-quality content just to share. Make sure you are still only asking them to share high quality content, and don’t do it over and over and over to where it is annoying, and breaking Facebook Rules.
Strategy #4: Know when to Post
We talked a little bit about this yesterday, in terms of relating to your customers, however I am going to approach it a little differently today. Checking out your Facebook Insights can give you some reach into when your fans are on the most, so obviously that would be a time to post your most important content. However, again, no surprise here, but Facebook is not allowing business owners to reach the same amount of people, so we have to get smart here. There are critics on both sides of the fence that say posting too much can be annoying. But knowing the difference between posting too much and posting smartly can make a world of difference. Obviously if you post 3 status’s within an hour, you are going to annoy some Facebook-ers. So, try spreading those out. I say a good general rule of thumb is to post once every 4-5 hours. You will be reaching different crowds at these times, because not everyone goes on Facebook at the same time. Actively, good times to post would be 6am, 10:30, 3:00, 7:00, and possibly 11 or midnight. Now, you may be looking at me like I am crazy, and maybe I am. I am not saying to post AT EACH OF THESE INTERVALS. I am saying, that is probably the max. However, using a program such as hoot suite can make posting in advance super easy for you. Facebook also allows you to schedule out your posts as well.
Strategy #5 Change What You Post About
If you are writing or posting the same information, people are going to pass right through your content on their timeline. Changing up the various things you post about helps keep interest to your page.
Examples:
- Inspiring Quotes
- Product How-tos
- Personal Posts
- Pictures
- Bloopers
- Videos
- Questions
- Links to Outside Content on your Blog
Another advantage to changing what you post about is that you can experiment to see what types of content get you the most “reach” or the most “engagement.”
Now, I don’t have a lot of various content here but I am going to share with you my last five posts. I broke a few rules this morning by not posting in 4 hour increments and by posting the same content as I was playing catch-up with photo previews. But you can see that generally, my “preview posts” (or posts where I preview pictures from a clients session) always tend to gain the most insight and the most reach. I have the most engagement on this, because they are sharing, liking and commenting on their photos. Take this back to your business. Do you have a business that you can share before and afters? Previews?
I have a friend that recently gained permission from a client who visited her purse store. She brought in a pair of shoes because she was looking for a matching purse. She found one, and my friend had taken a picture of her with her purse and shoes. Later, she posted it to facebook in which that customer tagged herself and bragged about her new gear. Now, that was easy, free marketing that helped her get more likes and engagement on her page!
So, that is all I have for you today but, tomorrow we are going to talk about How to WOW your fans. This is really going to touch on engagement too, as the two go hand in hand. So, don’t forget to pop back tomorrow for some more Concrete Facebook Strategies to Gain and Retain your Fan Base! Thanks!
Ashley, Creative 