By Shanon Roberts, on 11 August 2020
If you’ve been in the world of social media marketing, specifically Facebook marketing, then you may know that organic branded Facebook page engagement has been steadily declining since 2017. In fact, in 2019, branded page’s only reached out 5,50% of their audience.
But with over 2.5 million monthly active users, Facebook is still the number one social networking site in the world. This means its still worth investing time into building your Facebook page and creating an engaging page.
With a global trend of declining engagement, you may be wondering how you can boost your own page’s engagement rate. In this article, we’ll share 10 ways you can increase your Facebook page engagement.
How Does Facebook’s Algorithm Work?
Before diving into the different tips, it's important to understand how Facebook’s algorithm affects how users view your company’s page.
Since 2016, Facebook has made a strong effort to give their platform “back to the people.” This means user’s newsfeeds are now less focused on organic branded content and prioritize posts from user’s Facebook friends and Groups.
Since its inception, Facebook’s algorithm has always focused on quantity; how much time they could get a user to spend on the platform. After criticism in 2016 and 2017, Facebook decided to shift their efforts to focus on quality in 2018.
Now, Facebook spotlights “posts that spark conversations and meaningful interactions.” This change has had a significant impact on Branded Facebook pages, and caused a massive decrease in engagement rates.
More specifically, Facebook prioritizes posts that users typically interact with, the medium they usually interact with (videos vs posts vs photos), and the overall popularity of the post.
So with all this knowledge, how can you start to build more engagement on your page? Keep following along!
10 Tips to Increase Facebook Page Engagement
Increasing your page’s engagement doesn’t have to be an impossible task. I recommend implementing the following techniques over time, instead of all at once, to track which methods have the largest effect on your overall strategy.
Here are our ten tips to increase Facebook page engagement:
- Go Live
- Use Your Analytics
- Post When Your Audience is Most Active
- Engage Back
- Quality over Quantity
- Video Marketing
- Ask Questions
- Repurpose Content
- Use Facebook Groups
- Avoid Risky Content
Let’s take a deeper look!
1. Go Live
Live video broadcasts were expected to grow even more in 2020, but no one could have predicted just how popular they would become. The good news is, Facebook prioritize Live videos, meaning it's a great way to boost engagement for your page.
When your page goes live, it gets pushed up in the newsfeed and your engaged audiences will even receive a notification from the app that you are going live.
Facebook Lives are naturally very engaging, and tend to receive more Reactions and comments from users. After the broadcast is over, the video will stay on your feed where it can continue to grow and earn engagement. According to 99Firms, Facebook Lives get 10 times more comments than regular videos and 6 times as many interactions.
2. Use Your Analytics
Facebook Insights gives you a lot of relevant information that you can use to plan your content strategy. Pay attention to the reach, comments, reactions, and for each of your posts and use this information for future planning.
Take a look at your insights and assess what type of content received the most engagements in the last month. Maybe you’ll find that videos work better with your audience than images, or perhaps your audience prefers posts that link to relevant news stories.
Understanding what your audience likes to consume will make it easier for you to plan your social strategy and increase engagement
3. Post When Your Audience is Most Active
When you’re looking at your page Insights, be sure to take time to assess when your audiences is the most active. While we generally understand the best times to post on Facebook, it will be much more insightful to use the actual data from your audience.
Although Facebook’s algorithm is not chronological, posting when your audience is most active is still critical as newer content is prioritized over old content.
4. Engage Back
In life you get what you give, and this expression easily applies to social media engagement. In this case, if your audience takes the time to post a comment or question on one of your posts, engage back with them.
Social media users are savvier than ever, and they understand there is a real, live person sitting behind that brand avatar who can answer their questions. Take the time to comment on user’s comments and questions on your Facebook page, and your audience will be more likely to engage with you.
This generates goodwill with the person commenting, and other users reading the interaction will pay attention to the fact that you’re engaging and participating.
5. Quality over Quantity
Due to Facebook’s focus on “posts that spark conversations and meaningful interactions,” it’s not enough to post a picture everyday with a plain caption and cross your fingers that the posts will magically receive a lot of engagement.
Instead of posting for the sake of posting, post less often with more high quality content. The more your post, the more strapped you become for good ideas and strong content. Try reducing your posting to once a day or every other day to give you more time to come up with strong, relevant, entertaining content.
As mentioned before, pay close attention to your metrics to understand the best days to post for your audience, and make sure you prioritize these times.
6. Video Marketing
If content is king, then video marketing is its favorite subject. In general videos tend to be the highest performers in terms of engagement and reach.
Take a look at your specific analytics to understand how your audience reacts to video posts, and, if appropriate, start prioritizing video marketing on your Facebook page.
Post your videos natively on Facebook to make it as easy as possible for users to watch the video and build engagement. If the user has to click a link, for example a YouTube link, then they are much less likely to watch and interact with the post.
Also be sure to add captions, as 85% Facebook videos are watched video without sound.
7. Ask Questions
The best way to get people to comment is to ask them too. Ask questions that may generate some strong opinions (pineapple on pizza - yes or no??) and ask people to weigh in the comments.
Obviously, keep the topics relevant to your brand or industry, but don’t be afraid to solicit some opinions. And don’t forget to engage with the comments you do get, otherwise uers won’t feel motivated to share their opinions next time.
8. Repurpose Content
If you have a post that is blowing up with engagement, there are two ways you can give it a little extra love to encourage its growth:
- Boost it using paid Facebook ads
- Repost it with a new twist or feature
If your post is already doing pretty good, consider sponsoring it to help it reach even more people and grow your following and engagement numbers. Think about it this way, you know the post is already good because it's been “vetted” by your own community, so use this as an opportunity to show your bust stuff to new people.
After a few days or weeks, consider repurposing the post by posting it again, but with a new twist. Don’t publish the same post exactly the same way, but consider posting the same content but with a new element (via a new picture, relevant video, new link, etc.). See what works and stick with it.
9. Use Facebook Groups
It’s no secret that Facebook Groups have exploded in recent years. Consider creating a branded Facebook group where your most loyal fans can connect with each other.
You can post in the Facebook group through your brand’s Facebook page and spark conversations in that space, increasing your engagement and goodwill with your most loyal fans.
With Facebook’s increased focus on sparking conversation, this is a great pivot if you're just not finding success with your page. Also, while you will have to moderate the group, it will likely mean less posting for you. We’ve created an entire guide to branded facebook pages.
10. Avoid Risky Content
Following years of controversy, Facebook is cracking down on the content that gets posted to their platform.
This advice may seem obvious, but worth stating: Do not post content that could harm your page’s (and ultimately, your brand’s) reputation. Hootsuite does a good job of rounding up what is considered risky or “down rank” content, including:
- “Links to sites that use scraped or stolen content with no added value
- Borderline content (a.k.a offensive but not prohibited content)
- Misinformation and fake news
- Misleading health information or dangerous “cures”
- “Deepfake videos” or manipulated videos flagged as false by third-party fact-checkers”
In Conclusion
There are many different factors that may be impacting your Facebook page’s engagement rate. Try experimenting with each of these 10 tips, and take not of what works best for your brand. In general, the best thing you can do is take note and experiment. Take note of what works with your audience and what they enjoy engaging with, and don’t be afraid to experiment with different styles of posts and strategies. Eventually you will find the methods that work best for you.
