Despite common opinions, Facebook continues to be the most popular social media networking site. Every day, 1.62 billion individuals access Facebook. And with 270 million users overall, India leads this parade, followed by the US.
Males aged 25 to 34 and women aged 18 to 24 comprised the largest demographic category of Facebook users as of April 2020. (source statista.com)
The platform is now being used by more senior citizens and baby boomers than ever before.
But how do these data surveys help marketers?
Marketers and advertising agencies are aware that if they want to reach a larger audience, Facebook is an essential medium to use. As marketers or business owners, you would naturally want to be where your consumers are. What can you do, though, to attract and keep the correct audience in the face of such diversity?
Engagement on Facebook can be useful in this situation.
What is engagement on Facebook?
Let's start from the beginning.
Facebook engagement is the total number of activities a visitor does on your page, in your posts, or in your advertisements.
This interaction might take the form of responding to, commenting on, or sharing advertisements. Also, it could occur when you click a link, view a picture or video, or claim an offer.
Why is it important?
One of the best methods to increase your reach and grow your following is through active participation in Facebook posts.
People will pay attention to posts with interesting information and may mention their friends in the comments to let them know. If the posts are really fantastic, they might also tell their followers about them.
So, interesting and appealing Facebook posts greatly boost your chances of getting seen by more people and bringing in new customers.
How is it determined?
The Facebook engagement rate is determined by adding the number of likes, comments, and shares to the number of subscribers.
How Do Facebook Engagement and Facebook Reach Differ?
Although the two terms may create a similar image in your head, Facebook engagement and Facebook reach have slightly different meanings.
The term "Facebook reach" describes how many people have viewed your post. The overall total number of individual views that your content (text, video, etc.) or advertisements receive.
Consequently, Facebook engagement measures how many times people have interacted with your content overall. The quantity of clicks, likes, shares, comments and tags or mentions are used to measure these interactions.
Facebook engagement and Facebook reach are related, so the more engagement your posts receive, the more likely it is that they will be seen by more people.
For example, only those individuals will see additional postings from a Facebook page that receives 10 likes from the same group of people on a post. Even so, if some of these 10 individuals engage with your post by commenting, sharing it with their followers, or tagging their friends, Facebook will be encouraged to display those new individuals in your future posts as well.
13 Updates to Your Facebook Engagement Plan
Facebook's new algorithm is about offering its users more transparency and power with the most recent change to its ranking signals. Users may learn which sites they engage with the most, their favorite groups, the categories of posts they "like" the most, and other information by using the "why am I seeing this post" tool.
Facebook's ranking signals in 2020 will be determined by three key factors:
-The sort of pages or users a user often interacts with;
-The type of post (text, video, audio, or photo);
-And the post's popularity and influence.
You need to have a well-thought-out strategy if you want to increase your rankings, interactions, Facebook engagement, and eventually reach. So when target audiences and trends change, you must keep updating and refreshing these strategies.
With the exception of a few, most of the suggestions made below are meant to help you expand your organic reach. Most of these methods are cost-free, easy, and really achievable.
1. Identify your needs and set goals
This is always at the top of our list, as you can see if you've read through our other key principles. This is the case because each firm is different and has its own set of requirements. Hence, you must first identify what you want to do before coming up with a strategy.
The most frequent objectives that Facebook marketers continue to aim for are increasing their lead and sales-generating goals and increasing brand awareness. Additional objectives include increasing brand audiences, increasing site traffic, and increasing community participation.
Each of them will require a different approach. Because of this, it's crucial for you to understand your goal in light of your style of organization and your target market.
2. Identify Your Market
Knowing your target audience is essential because it enables you to choose the type of content you should produce based on your customer base.
Many online tools are available that let you understand your social media statistics. You may classify your audience according to factors like gender, age, location, employment, and more. To learn more about the visitors to your page, you may use Facebook's "page insight" function.
Your target audience shouldn't be only Gen Z or millennials; for example, if your music website exclusively plays 80s western tunes, they could enjoy a few songs, but the boomers and Gen Xers who grew up listening to those tunes will be the ones that engage most on your page.
3. Creative Engaging Content
Your main goal in making a Facebook page is to provide people access to important and helpful information, is that accurate? Or, at the very least, it is where you started.
You want to convey a message to your audience, regardless of the subject matter—sports, entertainment, cuisine, news, or memes. So why make it repetitive? It's not necessary for information to be biased just because it's information. Only when professors and students engage in conversation during lectures in the classroom are they engaging?
As a result, make the information exchange is mutual. Create quizzes, have live Q&A sessions, engage commenters in conversation, invite them to contribute life stories, and so on.
4. Identify When to Post
Take a minute to express gratitude for the development of data and data analytics.
Several important dos and don'ts for Facebook engagement have been revealed by Sprout Social's "optimal time to post" research.
DOs
-Wednesday is the best day to publish since engagement is at its peak on that day from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.
- On other weekdays, the hours between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. are ideal for audience interaction.
DONT’s
- Sundays have the lowest engagement of any day.
- Early in the morning and late at night are the worst times to post.
5. Create groups on Facebook
Private texting and small groups are replacing public and online communities—this is a new trend. Facebook is also focusing on "private experiences" rather than public pages.
So, setting up a Facebook profile for your company and only sharing information there is no longer sufficient. Smaller groups encourage more participation and enable organizations to concentrate on fulfilling the unique needs of their members.
6. Get a social media calendar
The main benefit of creating and using a social media calendar is that you almost never forget to post on significant days. With a planner, you may determine at the start of the year which days are the most important to you and for which you will want effective marketing strategies and ad copy.
For example, if your company manufactures sanitary napkins for ladies, you cannot afford to skip posting on holidays like Women's Day, Sanitation Day, Environment Day, etc.
In addition, you may use your calendar in combination with an analytics platform to monitor the effectiveness of one or a group of postings. You will be able to learn which posts are most shared and how much engagement they receive in the form of likes, shares, and comments. What sort of material does your customer base prefer most? Is it a live stream, a video, or just pictures? To determine whether your SEO efforts are successful, you may also use SEO tools.
7. Mix up the content types.
You may monitor what kinds of postings are getting repetitive and whether you need to change them with the help of the social media calendar.
Make use of a range of media to promote your Facebook page or groups. To spread your material, take into account using photographs, insightful written pieces, videos, Facebook stories, links, and live streams.
Continue to improve a certain sort of material if it works for you, but don't ignore the other components.
8. Optimize Your Page Mobile-Friendly
Almost 98% of active user accounts globally entered the social network on a mobile phone in April 2020. – (Statista)
And you want people to interact with your postings, correct? Thus, it's essential that you make the page and your postings mobile-friendly. Images, fonts, and thumbnail pictures will all show differently on a mobile device compared to a PC.
Moreover, Facebook offers tools like "Messenger," a mobile-only program that allows users to send direct messages to friends and family. Thus, your page must appear engaging on their mobile devices if you want to contact your users, directing them to new articles and events on your page.
9. Utilize video content
This is another statistic that adds to the earlier point about the importance of mobile optimization.
More than half of Facebook's video revenue comes from mobile-friendly video advertisements.
Also, Facebook interaction is strongest on mobile-first videos as more and more users switch to using their phones to view the site.
The fact that the bulk of these users watches videos without sound is another crucial consideration. While you must have sound in your films, the absence of sound increases the importance of having eye-catching, engaging pictures. Also, if there are any dialogues in the video, providing subtitles is crucial.
In a case study by Buffer, square videos generate 35% more Facebook interaction than landscape videos. Facebook videos that are square receive more comments and likes.
10. Encourage Staff Involvement
Humans tend to believe what they hear. This implies that consumers will only purchase a brand's items if they have received positive customer feedback.
Hence, you might request staff to become more vocal about events and new developments in the firm in order to improve your organic reach. It may be about a brand-new product launch and their own experiences with it, a fascinating discussion they can't wait to attend, and so on.
11. Give customer relationships a top priority
Be careful to respond to every comment and question on your Facebook page and groups. Surprisingly, when people find a piece they enjoy, they want to engage in conversation with the writer in the comments.
Brands or companies that communicate with their customers get greater interaction than those that don't. This is true because responding to their comments or messages shows that you value them enough to take the time to hear what they have to say. Be formal, kind, and respectful of your users at all times.
12. Posts with fewer words
Only 1.7 seconds are spent by users scrolling through their newsfeeds on mobile devices to view that piece of material.
While it's too little, it is the amount of time you have to gain their attention. Every piece of content you create must therefore look fantastic and have a message that is clear, engaging, and on point.
Your primary goal should be to provide material that will draw readers in and cause them to stop scrolling.
13. Analyze Facebook Boosts and Advertising.
Unfortunately, Facebook's algorithms are always changing, making it challenging for those who aren't currently Facebook marketers to develop their brand's social media presence.
To increase the visibility of your post, you may use Facebook ads and the "boost" feature. With this option, you may adjust the visibility of your posts based on the demographics of your target audience, your spending limit, and the length of time the ad will be running.
Conclusion
When trying to create a successful social media marketing plan, a one-size-fits-all approach won't work. Yet regardless of your media choice, the only thing that must never change is good content. Your writing must be short, attractive, engaging, and thought-provoking. You must place equal emphasis on producing excellent images, films, stories, written pieces, and other content as well as managing it.
You must use both free and paid methods to increase interaction on your page if you want to create a plan that is 100 percent effective for increasing Facebook engagement.
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