Increasing Facebook Page Engagements – The One-Two Punch
I struggled with whether or not to write this post because WHO KNOWS what Facebook will do next to change Pages. Each time they update them they make them even more difficult to use and Page owners continue to struggle to reach their audience. But I’ll share what I’ve learned now and hope that it helps some of you until things do change.
NOTE: I was not involved in any Rafflecopter giveaways during this time period. Anything that I did to get these numbers was from my own efforts. I had to post my findings now because my blog tour starts this weekend with a Rafflecopter giveaway.
Facebook Pages were a mystery to me for a very long time. I would post things there on my Page and no one would comment on them or like them, and my organic reach, that little number under the post that a Page admin sees, would barely tick up. This still happens, but I’ve seen a marked difference in growth since January 1st when I changed the way that I interacted with my Page.
Punch One!
Watch this video that I embedded below (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjpOPqxvcoU). It changed everything for me. The key to increasing your audience is engaging with your audience and other Pages. And I’m not just talking about putting items on your Page and then walking away. I’m not just talking about responding to random comments you get. I’m talking about logging into Facebook AS YOUR PAGE and interacting with other Pages that you like, AS YOUR PAGE.
Log in as your page!
Many people only Like other Pages from their personal account. Don’t do this. It’s time to sit back and think about you and your product (for me, it’s my books and my image as an author) and what other Pages on Facebook may be related to you. For me, I have gone into Facebook logged in AS MY PAGE and Liked pages about Japan, Tokyo, Kyoto, Kimonos, Korea, Seoul, other authors (especially New Adult, Science Fiction, and Romance), New York, Astronomy, National Geographic, etc etc. All of these Pages are reflective of my interests and what I write about.
Once I Liked those Pages (and I find new ones every day), their feed shows up on my Home page when I’m logged in AS MY PAGE. Now I take the time each day to go through my feed, like posts from those Pages I’m interested in, leave comments, and share those post from other Pages ON MY PAGE.
People, this is the single most important thing you can do as a Page owner. Once I started engaging with other Pages, Facebook started recommending me to THEIR audiences (you’ve seen these before, SUGGESTED PAGES that show up in the right sidebar or in the newsfeed). Example, I comment and like Dramafever posts, and then my Page gets recommended to the Dramafever audience. Wow, right? Suddenly people who have the same interests as I do and would probably love my books because they also like Dramafever are seeing my Page recommended to them.
Check out that number of Likes by Page Suggestion!
Check out this Insights graph. I started this activity on January 1 (so I included a few days before that to show you how low my activity was prior).
See how Likes have started coming from Page Suggestions after only a few days of interactivity? The graph goes up and down depending on how active Facebook users are (it dipped lower on Jan 11 and 12 which were a Saturday and Sunday) but I got almost NO Likes through Page Suggestions prior to this. That’s huge. It’s growing my audience and now I’m seeing a lot more interaction with my own Page from my new audience. There have been some Unlikes since I started becoming more active, and that’s fine too. Your new audience will have their own expectations of what they want to see. Some may love it, others may not. Do not take it personally 
Punch Two! (pow!)
Update your page almost every day and vary what you post. Variety is the spice of life, right? This includes Facebook.
The Main Rule: Do not post the same TYPE of content everyday. If you write haikus and post a new one each day, your audience is going to dwindle to nothing. Because Facebook likes it when you keep things fresh. Status posts every day are going to sink your Edgerank. Yes, text status posts currently get the highest organic views but, if you abuse it, it will die and not work for you any longer.
Post something original everyday. I have a calendar that I was using this past week to post to my page.
Monday: a status update where I talked about what I posted about on my blog, and I put the link to my blog post IN THE COMMENTS.
Late Monday: I had another blog post that day (a cover reveal) so I posted that as a normal link.
Tuesday: I shared an excerpt from my next book. A lot people liked it and many people shared it. It was a normal text only status update so it got a lot of organic views. It reached more than 33% of my audience which is actually really good!
Wednesday: I posted a status update about a price change on my books. This got me an unlike
It’s okay. They probably weren’t going to buy them anyway!Thursday: I shared a photo about the books I use to research my books and included a link.
Friday: I’m sharing this blog post and I’m asking people to comment on Facebook, too.
Of all the posts, my excerpt one on Tuesday was the most well-received. It’s original content and my audience wants that! I can’t always provide that, but I try to as much as possible.
I also take the time to share items from other Pages. Each day I try to share at LEAST one link from another Page. Some days, I share 5 or 6. So far, an infograph that I shared on Thursday is getting a ton of views. I think that Facebook favors infographs, so if you’ve got ‘em, show ‘em. (This is just a guess.)
I now pay attention to the “People talking about this” number as well. The higher it is in relation to your overall Likes number, the better you’re doing. This number is based on individual people liking, sharing, or commenting on your posts. The more people you have talking about you, the better. You can have one uber-fan that shares everything you post, likes, and comments on it, but they only have so many friends who probably haven’t muted them already. Their reach won’t be very far. But many individuals talking about you increases your exposure. Work on providing content people will want to engage with and see this number rise
What days and times your audience is online.
I also pay attention to when my fans are online. According to the graph above, most of my fans come online in the morning and then stay on throughout the day (slackers! Ha! Who am I kidding? I’m on Facebook all day. I love you, fans!). So if I want them to see something new and original from me first thing, I’ll post it just before 9am.
How different types of posts do on your Page.
You may notice that for my post on Monday, I put the link to my blog post in the comments instead of linking it in the status update. That’s because CURRENTLY Facebook is favoring plain text status updates! But you don’t want to do this all the time, because once you start abusing it, it will stop working. Only use it for things you NEED your audience to see.
Now, it should be stated that two weeks or a month from now or freaking tomorrow, Facebook could change from favoring status posts to favoring photo posts because on average photo posts do better, believe it or not. In fact, I bet that they do change things on purpose. It’s my suspicion that they have Edgerank on a fluctuating schedule that cycles throughout the year. (Don’t take my word on this. I know nothing. But I have gut instincts and I used to be a programmer and I would TOTALLY do this if I were working at Facebook.) Why? Because variety is the spice of life! I already said that, right? If you are already posting a variety of things throughout the week, it’s not going to matter if Edgerank changes its mind as to what it likes. Think about it.
Posts reach. Look at how they increased after January 1!
Likes, comments, and shares have gone up.
Overall organic reach has gone up!
OK, that’s all I have for you, and really, that’s all you need. The Facebook One-Two Punch to improving your audience is where it’s at.
Here are some links that I found and read that gave me insight on what I needed to do to understand Facebook Pages.
http://socialmediatoday.com/stephaniefrasco/1982256/how-increase-your-facebook-reach-without-paying-advertising – This one got me started after I watched the video.
http://www.jonloomer.com/2013/12/10/increase-facebook-organic-reach/ – This one had the most ideas that I liked, and I will be doing almost all of what he suggests in the coming months.
http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/facebook-page-metrics/ and http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/facebook-marketing-facebook-insights/ – These two helped me understand the insights metrics and what they all mean.
http://dashburst.com/report/best-time-to-blog/ – Though this is about blogging, I thought that its numbers were similar to what I saw in my insights.
http://www.insidefacebook.com/2012/01/10/people-talking-about-this-defined/ – This explained that one little number that I watch the most now.
So, please share this on Facebook and Twitter, etc! We should all benefit from my research! And if you learned something today, won’t you please do me a favor by signing up for my cover reveal? Or possibly signing up for my newsletter? Ha. Like how I slipped that in there at the end? Let’s share and help each other out at the same time!
