I know, I know. This blog is supposed to be about email marketing. But the vast majority of newsletters are also heavily promoted on Facebook.
So, if you want your audience on Facebook to continue seeing your posts, and in turn, help to build your community and drive more newsletter signups via Facebook, these quick-fire tips on increasing Facebook engagement should help. I’ve not gone into too much detail on each, as they’re all largely self-explanatory.
For context, according to Hootsuite, the average organic reach for a Facebook post is just 5.2%. Average interaction per post was just 0.25% in 2020, dropping to 0.08% for larger pages with over 100k followers. Not great.
How to Increase Facebook Engagement
- Test test test. Post frequency, timing of posts, brand voice. Test everything.
- Spy on your competitors. See what they’re experiment with. Is anything working well for them?
- Don’t use engagement bait: Content that “goad[s] people into interacting…in order to artificially boost engagement”.
- Focus on strong emotions: Entertain, inform, inspire, humor, and educate your followers.
- Use Facebook Insights to learn as much about your audience as you can.
- Ensure your web pages load fast, otherwise Facebook may penalize your link posts.
- Analyze your top performing and worst performing posts to see what you can learn.
- Be consistent.
- Run giveaways — we’ve found these can work extremely well if targeted correctly.
- Occasionally re-share old, evergreen content that performed well in the past.
- Use emojis in your post for more personality.
- Ask questions. Ask for recommendations. Start a conversation. Prompt engagement.
- If you can, post videos natively to Facebook — don’t link to YouTube.
- Repurpose high performing content into something new – infographics, images, blog posts, videos, etc.
- Be creative — come up with challenges, quizzes, polls and fun games for your audience to join.
- Join the conversation. Read comments, and meaningfully reply to your audience.
- Keep your copy snappy, and no longer than it needs to be.
- Boldly show your brand’s personality. Don’t be boring. Be relatable.
- Post user-generated content — screenshot reviews and post them as images, share images people have taken of your products, etc.
- Be ruthless with quality control. Only share your highest quality content (this goes for images, too).
- Experiment with live video. If you can pull this off, it will serve you well. Schedule these in advance for more attendees.
- Share only your best content with other groups (do this sparingly. Do not spam groups).
- Experiment with Facebook Stories — yet another way to reach your followers.
- Promote your page on other platforms, including your website and newsletter.
- Build a Facebook group — these can be incredibly valuable to your audience, and can lead to great interaction.
- Verify your page — Followers will take you more seriously and be more likely to interact.
- Experiment with Boosting posts — especially if you’re trying to sell something or drive subscribers.
- Piggyback on trending news stories or hashtags. Join a popular conversation early on.
- Rework currently popular memes for your industry.
- If you run a small page, ask friends and team-mates to share your content.
- Inject keywords into video titles, and sort your videos into playlists to increase discoverability.
- Post content that is exclusive to Facebook as an incentive for people to like your page.
- Ask followers to turn on notifications for your posts (if you don’t post too often).
- Tag relevant brands in your posts — they may share it with their followers!
- Collaborate with other pages (i.e. sharing occasional relevant posts from other pages, and vice versa).
- Recognize your “Top Fans” regularly, to keep them engaged.
- Pin your most valuable post to the top of your news feed.
And there you have it. I hope this helps to give you a few ideas of how to increase Facebook engagement on your Page. Don’t forget to always be testing. Some of these approaches will work for some audiences, and not for others. And always be sure that the effort you’re putting in is worth the results.
