Only 6% of your “fans” are engaging with your Facebook page.
While over a staggering four billion Facebook posts go live each day…
Let that sink in for a second.
The estimated number of active Facebook users is almost 2 billion now. And while the ratio of 1:2 users and posts may seem easy, the percentage of organic posts reaching an average facebook user is only 2%!
Think this is enough of a problem?
Unfortunately, there’s more.
Here’s another thing to worry about: your brand competitors are all posting a total of 8 updates per day.
The competition is just getting tougher and your posts’ spotlight keeps getting thinner and thinner.
Facebook Engagement Rate vs. Number Of Likes
While maximising the number of your brand’s “likes” might be appealing, there’s also the Facebook engagement rate that all marketers need to consider.
You might be thinking – which one is more important?
For most Facebook pages, a large percent of their likes came from users who actually used the particular brand at a certain point in their lives. In some cases, it’s from users who have seen their friends do so.
And here’s where the problem starts to occur. A great number of Facebook likes is great – no denying. But if this cluster of “like and ignore” users make up the majority of your page likes, then the high number of likers doesn’t necessarily mean your brand is doing well.
Many businesses experience a low Facebook engagement rate, regardless of how many their likes are. Few interactions and your content being ignored is a hurdle.
On the contrary, pages with higher engagement rate could mean more people are mentioning your brand, sharing its content, and recommending the brand’s product/services to friends.
Facebook Engagement rate determines the potential reach of your brand to prospects.
Start focusing on growing your engagement rate instead of hoarding idle Facebook likes.
How Facebook Determines an Organic Posts’ Reach
Facebook confirmed that one of the reasons as to how its algorithm determines a post’s viewership is by the engagement received by the post itself. The number of comments and likes a post receives… can also make it more likely to appear on your[user] Newsfeed.
It’s an oxymoron, really: you only get likes, comments, and shares if you appear frequent across customer newsfeeds but your chances of appearing are slim without them. Good social engagement is needed for your organic content to show up but you first need to show up to get engagement.
Sounds like an impossible riddle?
Fortunately, there’s still a way to tap that audience potential and lock in engagement.
We’ve listed down 7 ways on how to boost your organic post’s likes, comments, clicks, and shares despite of the newsfeed algorithm.
7 Surefire Ways To Boost Your Brand’s Facebook Engagement
- Check your Website Load Speed
Are you confused about how your website could affect your Facebook engagement?
If you’re one of the many businesses who use social media platforms to redirect casual users to your website and hook them up, you may want to listen up.
Recently we covered Facebook’s coming new update.
Among all of the other things to consider on how your post reaches your audience, the new update will now start crawling into your shared links and consider its loading time. It will then compare it to the speed results of other competing links published by users and business pages alike.
Facebook will start ranking every link’s load page. The faster pages will rank higher. While this also means slower pages could receive lower rankings.
The update will start rolling out gradually over the coming months, which gives you plenty of time to boost your website’s load speed.
So, if one of your marketing tactics is redirecting Facebook users to your website, you better start preparing your website first.
For more tips on how to determine and boost your website’s load time, see our previous article.
- Find the best time to post
Organic posts are being reduced. No one said they’re being wrapped off the social media entirely.
One way in reaching your audience is learning hard backed up statistics. Regardless of the tight competition, your chances are higher if you scheduled your post alongside the best time of the day audiences are active. If you’re posting the first thing you arrive in the office Monday morning, expect low engagement rate – everyone else is busy working, just as you are. No one’s waiting for your post on Facebook – nearly everyone’s looking at spreadsheets and reports!
CoSchedule finalized the numbers on which time is the best to post your organic content instead of making smart guesses based on your everyday routine.
Here’s what this study means to marketers:
- 1-4 PM is a great time to schedule a post.
- The best and prime time to post, however, is 12-1 pm – Saturday and Sunday.
- The worst time, however, is weekends before 8 am and after 8 pm.
Click here for more of CoSchedule’s best of the time to post.
- Learn your audience
If you want strangers to connect with you, firstly you must know more about them and talk about what they want.
Some businesses find that being an established business in a certain industry could be an excuse to just post content exclusive to that field.
Think about it: a bed and pillow company doesn’t have to post about its bed and pillow products and its business news. It’s exhausting. No one wants to read beds and pillows every single day.
Be more approachable and learn to be the life of the party: explore more topics that would excite your audience and Facebook engagement will follow.
Set up a spreadsheet and list down posts with the most engagement. Try to pattern, or at least set a routine, of the high engaging posts and schedule.
- Find Share-worthy content
Speaking of catering what your audience wants to read, start sharing links with share-worthy and intriguing content to boost your engagement.
Don’t know which link/topic appeals to your users in real-time? BuzzSumo can get you right on track.
This is what our team personally use to find the latest trending links. Find the most shared content and key influencers by simply typing your topic or keyword on buzzsumo’s search:
The rest of the article results will simply follow.
- Use Photos
And I don’t mean stock photos. Use real, behind the scene photos.
Sure, your co-worker might groan as we speak about seeing another photo above all the coffee shop photos your friends already share.
Facebook photos could be tiring, but that doesn’t eliminate the fact that people will still look at them. In fact, statistics show that up to 75% of the posts on Facebook are photos of which delivers up to 87% of the content shared.
Instead of using generic, boring stock photos, start using real-life photos to better connect with your audience. This increases your value since real faces behind the company operation resonates better. Your brand will ultimately feel more human and personal in no time.
- Talk to people!
You’re setting up all these posts to ignite engagement. And yet, once someone actually comments on your post, you ignore them? How else do you think a discussion occurs?
Don’t leave your audience hanging. Remember the more comments on a post, the better. Plus, this discussion could organically reach commenter’s network of friends.
Start catching up with your unreplied engagements asap. The longer your reply takes, the less likely the conversation will continue.
Maybe you’ll receive some troll comments every now and then. Who doesn’t? Either way, people generally comment on Facebook posts if they clicked with the content. Don’t ignore small details, especially if it’s a complaint in public. Making your audience feel heard raises the chance of conversations on more of your future posts.
- Start a strategy
With all of the statistics we’ve provided in place, you can now begin strategizing to raise your page’s engagement rate.
Open a spreadsheet and start scheduling with highly engaging content from your industry and your team. Outline your posts, medium used (like images, videos, or link), determine the best time to post your content, and additional steps to extract more engagement.
No one knows your audience better than you and your team. Split test your multiple posts to find the most well-received content and begin your formula from there.
There’s nothing worse than trying to start a conversation and getting no reaction. The same thing applies to posting new content and getting no traction from your “scroll-past” audience.
Practice being the life of the party by following these listed ways on how to better approach your Facebook audience and begin building deeper connections.