How to Increase Facebook Engagement in 8 Steps

We all want more traffic to our small business Facebook pages. After all, traffic means sales, right? Well, not quite. Traffic is a great indicator that your marketing efforts are paying off, but what you really need to grow is Facebook engagement. 

Facebook Engagement is any action someone takes on your Facebook page or one of your posts. The most common examples of this are reactions (including likes), comments and shares, but this also includes saves, viewing a video or clicking on a link. Here are eight different ways to increase your small business’ Facebook engagement.

1. Post native videos

Instead of posting a video to YouTube and sharing it on Facebook, post it on Facebook first. When you post a video natively from Facebook, the video will automatically start playing as your followers scroll through their news feed. As you probably have noticed when scrolling through your own feed, this catches the viewer’s eye and, before you know it, you’re watching through to the end.

Facebook videos that are between 30 seconds and two minutes long get the most engagement, with the ideal length being 60-90 seconds.

2. Optimize your videos and create playlists

When you post a video, make sure you’re also including a keyword-rich title and description and tags to that video. This will increase the video’s chance of showing up in relevant feeds and searches throughout Facebook. 

As you start to amass a collection of SEO-rich, native videos, create a playlist for them. By doing this, more related videos will continue to be shown to the user after they’re done with the first one. If they aren’t a follower of your page before watching the video, this will most likely draw them back to your homepage for a follow.

3. Go live

Going live can be a little intimidating, but there’s nothing to be scared of. Whenever you do a live post, your video will shoot to the top of your followers’ news feeds. On top of that, people who have interacted with your page regularly or recently will get a notification letting them know you’re live. The boost in the news feed plus those notifications are a fantastic combination for success!

4. Post exclusive content

Everyone likes to feel like a VIP, and creating exclusive content for just this channel makes your followers pay closer attention to your Facebook feed. For example, you can post special discounts on Facebook or release data on an upcoming case study before it’s published on your website. 

Make your Facebook posts count by sharing exclusive content users won’t find anywhere else. Publicize flash sales, contents, giveaways and the like. 

5. Look into Facebook Insights for data you can use

Social media strategies aren’t one-size-fits-all. Facebook knows this too, and because of this, they provide you with page data in Facebook Insights. This should be reviewed at least once a month to take note of trends and outliers. You’ll want to pay attention to not only the subject of your content but the format in which people view your content. 

This information shows what makes your audience unique and how you can create more content that aligns with their interests. It’s a simple thing to dive into and show you just how to increase Facebook engagement.

6. Use cinemagraphs

A cinemagraph is an animated photo. It’s basically a video file that plays in a continuous loop, which sort of looks like a still image with a minor piece of movement. These are huge eyecatchers and will stand out in your followers’ news feeds. 

7. Make the most of user-generated content

Whenever your business is mentioned or tagged anywhere, it’s another piece of content you can use. Got a new review on Google? Quote it and link it to your Facebook page. Someone posted a picture of your goods or talked about your services online? Share that picture too and thank the person who shared it. 

Wherever, whenever a user tags, mentions, reviews or writes about your brand in a positive way, get the most out of that content in every way possible.

8. Interact and engage meaningfully

Don’t you get a warm fuzzy feeling when a celebrity retweets you or when you get a personalized response on a review you leave online? Interacting makes you feel special, and it makes your followers feel special too.

Interacting is par for the course, no matter what social media platform you’re on. Whenever you get a comment or message, respond accordingly. Answer their question, provide insight, give them guidance, thank them for their feedback, whatever you need to do to make sure they know you’re listening.

If you’re a dedicated social media manager, try to do this throughout the day in real-time. If you’re a business owner who is juggling many hats, set aside a certain amount of time every day and dedicate that time to social media. 

If you just aren’t able to engage with your audience like you want to, it might be time to think about hiring a social media manager like Rooted Web. Our dedicated marketing team is here to show you how to increase Facebook engagement and get the most out of your content. Let’s chat!