Do you struggle with getting your fans to engage with the content you share on Facebook?
While Facebook has over 1.5 billion users worldwide that spend 700 billion minutes on the site per month , you would expect that your engagement would be much higher than it normally is.
Why it is difficult to increase Facebook engagement
If you are not seeing the levels of engagement on Facebook that you would like, there are a number of reasons why this could be happening.
Sharing low quality content
Your news feed is not a dumping ground. As a way to clean-up the Facebook news feed, Facebook reported they wanted to show more high quality content to users.
To do this, Facebook would penalize low quality content that was being shared.
What is considered low quality content?
Internet memes and status updates that are off topic are considered low quality content.
While these items tend to see higher engagement on Facebook because they are very “shareable.” Facebook doesn’t think so and therefore does not show it to users.
The takeaway here is that you will need to find another source of content to share. If you are a business and have a Facebook Page, I would recommend skipping all of the fluff and instead, share content about your brand and tell your story and what makes your business so great.
Posting when your fans are not online
If you are blindly posting on Facebook, you definitely need to consider a new Facebook strategy.
Think about it. If I am sharing content when the least number of users are not on Facebook, I am only reaching a fraction of my audience.
To increase your engagement, you need to ensure you are posting when people are on Facebook. This way they see your content and can interact with it.
There are plenty of tools you can use to help you figure out what the right posting times are.
For example, if you have a Facebook Page, one way to increase Facebook engagement is to use Facebook Insights and to look at when your fans are online.
Alternatively, you can also use the excellent Facebook tool, Agorapulse to measure how effective your Facebook content is and to tweak when you are sharing it.
Sharing the wrong type of content
While content is kind, it is important to know what type of content works best for your situation.
Instead of copying someone else’s Facebook strategy, you need to figure out what works best for you.
For example, some Facebook users see increased engagement from photo-sharing. For others who don’t have an audience interested in this type of content, text only status updates work well for them.
The takeaway here is to try different types of content to learn what Facebook users are interested in. Once you identify Facebook trends, keep using them until they no longer deliver the results.
Now that you are aware of some of the ways you can hurt your Facebook engagement, here are some tips to help you increase Facebook engagement.
What types of content can increase Facebook engagement?
- Posts with less than 80 characters get 23% more engagement on Facebook.
- Using emoticons increases engagement on Facebook by 33%
- Asking a question gets 100% more comments.
- Sharing quotes on Facebook generates 26% more likes and 19% more shares.
Conclusion
Increasing Facebook engagement won’t happen overnight. It takes work to figure out what type of content users on Facebook are interested in.
Besides the tips mentioned to increase Facebook engagement, do you have any others that have worked for you?
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