How to Engage Your Fans on Facebook
If the average marketer on Facebook isn’t steadily working on their engagement, then the average campaign is ultimately going to fail. There’s simply no way to sugarcoat that fact. With the way News Feed ranking algorithm sorts and lists material, and with the importance of your fan reach, engaging with people is the only way to go.
Social networks do require you to be social, and thus finding various ways to engage fans is something that will benefit you in numerous ways. You can ultimately develop a stronger brand following and reputation, attract more leads and earn more sales, and ultimately save money on your advertising by engaging with people. Here are some tips to help you along.
Quality Tips for Engaging Facebook Fans
1: Capture Attention Instantly
One of the best ways to engage with people is to capture their attention as quickly as possible. The average user has a lot of stuff flying through their News Feed, and even a new update like Story Bump isn’t going to guarantee that people pay attention to your posts. So when you release something, give it a very catchy headline, make it intriguing to a reader, and give them a reason to open it. Teasers work very well, so lead with your best stuff.
2: Be More Visual
Another great way to capture someone’s attention and to engage is to be more visual in your posting. Engagement goes beyond someone simply viewing your material and involves someone Liking, sharing, commenting or clicking through on your posts. Providing high-quality, custom visual material is a great way to get someone to engage. Think about custom photos of events, quality infographics explaining something of note, or even humorous, popular memes attached to your posts.
3: Solve a Real Problem
Members of your niche have one thing in common: They have a problem that needs to be solved. This is the “demand” end of business and always has been. That doesn’t change simply because we’re talking about the Internet. So find a problem in your niche and seek to solve it. Perhaps people are having an issue understanding how your product works for them, or maybe they’re having trouble finding an affordable option for the holidays. Whatever the problem is within your niche, seek to solve it.
4: Ask Questions
Questions are another great way to engage. This leads out by directly requiring engagement from people. Now, make sure you don’t simply throw out statuses that ask “What are you doing?” and other trite questions. Dig deep and use Facebook’s features to assist you. Look to create pertinent questions that are based on a theme. You could try holiday-themed questions, for example. You can tie that in with brand-related questions, like “What theme do you think we should select for the holiday season?” while giving options to choose from.
5: Provide Interactive Material
Playing off of the previous tip, you can use different features and apps to help you build your Facebook engagement. For instance, you can create a multitude of polls, quizzes and even cool puzzles to engage with people. Create multiple choice polls, pertinent pop-culture quizzes, and other interactive material like contests and sweepstakes to help boost your engagement.
6: Engage in Dialogue
Engagement has to operate like a two-way street on Facebook if you want to keep it going. So when someone asks you a question or comments on one of your posts, reciprocate. When someone Likes your material, see if they have anything you can Like right back; the same with sharing. And mix in occasional posts which seek to create dialogue by asking people for suggestions or advice.
7: Show a Personal Side
Your brand cannot be seen as a cold, empty, business-only entity. People on Facebook are looking for engaging, warm brands that spew personality from their pages. This isn’t necessarily hard to accomplish; you just have to put in the effort. Show some personal aspects of your business by listed news and photos about live events, parties, company milestones, personal profiles (abridged, of course) of employees, and link your personal network to the professional network.
8: Add CTAs
No matter what type of material you’re providing, adding on a strong CTA (call to action) will always improve your odds of engaging with people. Say that you’re listing a new detailed product review and even have a quality infographic to help explain it. This might pick up some engagement, but adding a CTA will still make it clear that the post requires action. For example, you can suggest that people tell you what they think, click-through to read more, Like or share for some incentive, or a number of other CTAs which put the onus on the fan to act.
Driving your engagement not only has an immediate impact per fans’ feelings about your brand, it also helps weight you in a positive direction with News Feed ranking algorithm and the new Story Bump feature. No matter how you slice it, engaging with people is vital on Facebook.
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