5 Tips to Grow Engagement on Facebook

Having a Facebook page for your business is an absolute necessity for social media marketing success. With over 1 billion active Facebook users to date,  you’ll be able to effectively reach your target audience with the click of a button.

Facebook allows you to effectively send out your brand message to your target audience through their advanced targeting options. Once you have reached your target audience, you will need to build a solid fan base for your brand. Attracting Facebook fans relies heavily on engagement. The general rule of thumb for engagement levels are as follows:

Engagement rate > 6.5% for pages with less than 10K fans.

Engagement rate > 4.5% for pages with more than 100K fans.

Now that you know how frequently you should be engaging with your audience,  you must ask yourself: how do I engage with my fans?  We’ve provided you with a few starter tips below:

1. Ask questions – Every Facebook user wants to be heard, so give them that opportunity. Make sure you ask open-ended questions and give them the opportunity to tell others their  opinion on various topics. Not only will this give you a higher rate of engagement, it will also give you more insight about your products. When you learn about your audience’s likes and dislikes, you can begin to cater your content to their interests.

2. Use sharp and bright images – If there is anything that catches the eye of a Facebook user, it is the quality of images being used. Uploading creative and attractive images for each post will likely increase user engagement. You must also tap into your creative side when creating a Facebook cover photo for your page. As users visit your profile, the cover photo will be one of the first things a user will notice. You can use your cover photo to showcase products/services or upcoming promotions, for example.

3. Post quality content – You should be catering your content to your target audience’s interests. Take your time planning out quality content to post and ensure that each post is “share” worthy.  You should be replying to comments and questions in a timely and polite manner.  Don’ t forget to thank users for positive feedback.

4. Contests – Facebook now allows users to directly run contests on their pages. Depending on your social media goals, the type of contest you run can range from sweepstakes, instant-win contests, photography or video contests, “Like” to win contests,  and voting contests. Hosting a contest is bound to attract new fans and in turn increase your level of engagement.

5. Insights – Use the Facebook “Insights” tool to view your page statistics. This tool will inform you on the number of “Likes” you have received, the average amount of time people spend on your page, and the time of day the majority of your fans are online, for example. It is important to measure your promotional efforts as adjustments to your content (such as type of content and when your content is  being posted may be needed to grow fan engagement.

Increasing your engagement levels on Facebook will certainly not happen overnight. However, if you commit to the tips outlined above, you’ll be well on your way to improving your engagement levels.