So you want to know how to improve Facebook engagement? I’ve been with Facebook since the early days, since when the ‘Like’ button was the most important thing for a Business Page, so I really want to share the tips I’ve picked up along the way.
Facebook are famous for changing their algorithms, so it’s not easy trying to build a community online unless you know how.
How to Improve Facebook Engagement?
Here are my top 6 tips to help you level up your Facebook page.
1. Post Consistently
You can’t expect to post once in a blue moon and get results. At the same time, don’t over do it. If you are a small page just starting out, why not try to schedule one or two posts daily for 2 weeks and then analyse your insights. You can always up the posts to 4 or more if you feel it’s going well. From experience, posting links and nothing else is not going to do you any favours. A few memes and shares from pages within your niche will get you far.
2. Use Facebook groups to your advantage
Share a post from your Facebook Page to groups instead of re-posting a link. This will give other group members a gentle reminder that you have a Facebook page and will also count towards your reach.
3. Like as your Facebook Page
Do you find yourself commenting a lot of other pages using your personal Facebook profile? If this is in your niche for example another geek page, then select your page before commenting and you may gain a few new likes, who are very likely to be into your page and website content.
4. Don’t Get Hashtag Happy
I’ve just glanced at a page on Facebook who used 15 hashtags in their latest post. FIFTEEN HASHTAGS! Some of them weren’t even relevant to the content or niche so that really is a waste of time and a drain on their reach. I personally don’t use hashtags on Facebook posts, but when I did, I was only using one. Your hashtags are usually very close or the same as your brand/site keywords. This is something you can try out and check back on after a few weeks.
5. Facebook Ads
But Facebook is free….?
If you really want to reach your target Facebook audience, then Facebook ads are the way to go. There are free Facebook courses online that you can take in Facebook Blueprint. This has changed a lot since I last logged in, there are 7 courses focused only on instagram! There are even certificates and badges which you can display online. Yay! Because who doesn’t love certificates?!
I’m off to re-enroll after I finish this post!
6. Delete Inactive Likes
Getting rid of those dead weight users, might just improve your Facebook reach. It might sound harsh but I started to delete people from my page. If you delete anyone by mistake they can always come back if they are really interested.
To begin deleting inactive likes, open up your Facebook Page in a desktop browser (this won’t work on the mobile app). Click on the settings button, which should be top right of your page.
On the left side-bar, look for ‘People and Other Pages’ and click.
Select the people that you want to remove by clicking on the check box. After that you can click on the small settings icon next to the search box and click remove from page likes. If there is a specific person you want to remove, you can search their name in the search box.
With 1,600+ likes on my fan page for Cuteek, you would think I’d get at least a few likes on content that I share with the page. Nope, zip diddly. It is slowly on the increase, but engagement and reach are what I am keeping my eye on as opposed to actual page likes.
I will say I’ve used Facebook ads to boost posts around Halloween last year, but I have never paid for page likes. So where am I going wrong?
A few years ago I used to play an online Facebook game called Sorority Life. I was really into it and used to post tips and tricks on my blog, which I would then share onto my Facebook page. Because of the success of the game, I gained a lot of followers in a short space of time and had a nice amount of traffic to my blog.
Not long ago, there was an announcement on the Sorority Life fb page that they were closing the game down and that’s where my problem started.
Think about all those gamers that clicked the big like button on my page because they wanted more updates about Sorority Life. Some people had multiple Facebook accounts due to the nature of the game and the gifting system.
So when the game ended, those ‘fans’ didn’t necessarily like the rest of my blog and became ‘dead weight’, no longer interested in what I’m posting, so they aren’t engaging. Facebook’s algorithm sees this and doesn’t let my content display to other fans.
The other reason I had uninterested fans was because I hadn’t found my blogging tribe.
I was using the super helpful tips from SITSBlogging and they would often announce on their page to follow other bloggers.
Page likes would increase and everyone was happy, or were they?
No offence to anyone here but this meant I was following tons of Mommy Bloggers and Food Bloggers. I’m not a mother and I’m not really into cooking, so this is actually bad for those bloggers too! I’m not their target audience. Basically stay in your lane when it comes to this.
I also logged in as my page and unliked any pages to do with cookery or Mommy blogging. While I was there I went ahead and started to find my tribe’s pages which are full of things that DO interest me.
Go to your Facebook profile and unlike any pages you are no longer interested in. You will be doing the admin a favour! ?
How the Facebook Algorithm Works
Let’s say you post a funny meme to your Facebook page. Facebook sees that no one is engaging (clicking like, sharing or commenting) this could be anything from being a bad quality image to something irrelevant (maybe your audience is no longer interested) so they don’t display it in more of your fan’s newsfeed.
On the other hand, if you share something that really strikes a chord with your audience and you begin to get likes, then Facebook will say oh fun, this page has interesting content, let’s display it to more of their fans, hence improving your reach. The reach can be a higher number than your total page likes because the content can be shared with people who aren’t yet a fan of your page.
Here’s an example of great Facebook engagement and reach of a page that I manage in the travel niche, which frequently has content go viral because it’s relevant, timely and good quality. These stats are from a video that I uploaded 24 hours ago.
So you can see, the organic reach is 108,183 people, which is fantastic because the page in question has just under 30,000 page likes! More than triple the amount of people are seeing the content uploaded to the page. Awesome!
Here’s an example of a Batman meme I posted in October last year on Cuteek’s Facebook page. I thought it was pretty hilarious, but not everyone did. Even though at the time I had 1,600+ page likes, the reach was only 28! This means Facebook showed that post to just 28 of my fans, the engagement was low, so they stopped showing it to the rest of the people who like my page. What if those 28 people were dead accounts or people no longer interested? (Hence why I started to delete those old inactive likers)
My Facebook Plan of Action
I’m already seeing an improvement in a few days after the start of my deleting spree. The scheduling feature is going to be my new friend and my page’s newsfeed is going to be full of interesting content that I will enjoy and be able to share to my page. Slow and steady wins the race with this one, it’s not going to happen overnight.
I’m also going to enroll on a few of those Facebook courses I mentioned, because as you know social media is changing every day and staying on top of it all can be overwhelming. Of course if I learn any helpful tips and tricks along the way I will share them here on Cuteek.com
What is your Facebook plan of action?
If you have any tips on how to improve Facebook engagement, success or failure stories from your own experience I would love to hear about it in the comments below.
You can find me on Facebook here: facebook.com/cuteek 😉
Did you find this post valuable? If so, I’d really appreciate a share on the internets.
