Secrets to Enhancing Your Social Following's Participation

Over the years, Facebook’s algorithm has undergone a lot of changes to ensure the users don’t get bombarded with irrelevant posts on their feeds. While this is great news, it can be hard to keep up with the algorithm to get maximum engagement on your posts.

If you’re looking to get higher engagement on your Facebook posts, here are a few tips and tricks you can use.

What Does Engagement Mean on Facebook?

Engagement is any interaction your audience has with your posts. These interactions include likes and reactions, shares, saves, comments, tags, views, and so on. While likes, shares, and comments are called active engagement, views and clicks are called passive engagement.

Active engagement says how shareable your content is, and passive content says how consumable your content is. Combining the two gives your total engagement.

12 Ways to Increase Engagement on Facebook

1. Craft Relevant Content

No matter how good your post is, your audiences care about it only if it’s relevant to them. This is why you need to understand your audience, their interests, and demographics to create shareable posts. Create informative and entertaining posts about real-life events and trending topics.

The more information you have about your audience and their preferences, the easier it will be to create relevant posts and gain higher engagement.

2. Time Your Posts

Posting at the right time is as important as posting the right content. Your content might be great, but if there’s no one online to look at it, your efforts are wasted. So, analyze when your audience is the most active on Facebook and post accordingly.

Sometimes, posting at the peak hour might not work because that’s the time everyone else is posting too. So, your post might get lost in the feed. So, experiment with different times and see which works the best for you. You can check engagement times via Facebook Audience Insights oruse social media analytics tools like Google Analytics and Quintly.

3. Post Visually Appealing Content

Content with popping colors and great design can make your audience pause and stay on your post a bit longer. This is why you should take the time to create visually striking posts to grab your followers’ attention. Use HD images, animations, gifs, and make use of editing tools likeCanva to create eye-catchy content.

4. Post Video Content

Videos are an excellent way to tell a story. Not only do they pack more information, but they create more engagement than other forms of content. Since46% of users on Facebook watch videos , it’s a good reason not to skip on video content.

Out of video content, live videos get more engagement, so make sure you go live often on your page. To get the most engagement for your videos, upload them directly to Facebook instead of sharing a link; the algorithm ranks native videos higher.

5. Post Relatable Memes

Memes are a great way to connect with a younger audience such as Gen Z, but make sure not to overdo it. Create and post memes that align with your usual content. These posts tend to get more engagement as they prompt tags, saves, comments and shares.

6. Don’t Ask for Likes and Reactions

Asking your audience for likes, shares, or comments is called “engagement bait”, and Facebook is not a big fan of this tactic. It identifies posts that contain engagement baits and demotes them—lowering their visibility. So, make sure you don’t use them in your posts.

7. Include Subtle CTAs

In place of engagement baits, you can include phrases that direct your audience to comment or click the share button. The point here is to ask meaningful and engaging questions instead of just saying: “Hit like if you agree or comment if you don’t.”

Great CTA phrases will persuade the audience to say something in the comments or even start a debate in the comment section. Here’s an example:

8. Interact in the Comments

If your followers feel that you care about them and their opinions, they’re more likely to interact with your posts. Replying to their comments is one way you can convey that.

When you reply to a comment, you prompt people to come back and check your reply, which means even more engagement. While you’re doing so, make sure to address your audience by their name and personalize the reply. After all, nobody likes automated replies.

Another way to interact and connect with your followers is by sharing their posts. You can share their experience with your product or something interesting they said about your product. It not only acts as social proof but also shows your followers that you value their opinions and suggestions.

10. Host Contests and Giveaways

Giveaways and contests are a great way to show gratitude or celebrate your milestones with your followers. They help you get organic reach on your posts, keep your current followers excited, and gain new followers. Most importantly, make sure you followFacebook guidelines while organizing giveaways and contests to avoid any legal issues.

11. Optimize Your Post Length

With the decreasing attention spans, it’s obvious that people don’t have the patience to read your long captions. Most times, people just read the first line or two to decide if they care about the post.

So, try to keep your posts short and cut to the chase. On Facebook, anything at or lower than80 characters is a good length . Although that might not work for you, so do experiment with different lengths and see which one works the best with your audience.

There’s nothing wrong with reposting your popular content; people do it all the time on social media. It’s an easy way to try and get nearly the same level of engagement you got when you first posted it.

If you don’t want to repost the same content, you can pick out the elements that worked in a specific post and recreate something similar. This way, you have a greater chance of attracting similar interactions on your post.

Increase Facebook Engagement by Creating Content That Matters

Increasing engagement doesn’t happen overnight; it takes time, effort, and a blend of various strategies. Mix and match the above tips and tricks to know which ones work the best for you. Once you find your groove, be consistent with that strategy.

Also, keep an eye on trends and tweak your content accordingly. These will help significantly improve your engagement rate over time and help you gain more followers.

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Secrets to Enhancing Your Social Following's Participation