7 Ways to increase your Engagement on Facebook
Guest Post by Jimmy Mackin of The MLS App
“How to” Engage your Fans on Facebook
Deciding when to post, what to post, and how to get the most amount of engagement from your post is a challenge every Realtor® faces. Buddy Media released a report that provided incredible insight into how businesses can increase the effectiveness of their Facebook Marketing.
The Optimal Post Length
Keep it Short and Sweet. Posts that contain less than 80 characters have a 27% higher rate of engagement. What is even more fascinating is that 81% of all posts are over 80 characters.
We analyzed posts from the Tech Savvy Agent Facebook Page and concluded that posts under 80 characters had a 73% higher engagement rate than posts over 80 characters.
My advice – go back and look at your last 10 posts , are they over 80 characters?
Bad News for URL Shorteners
URL shorteners provide great analytics on how many click-throughs you are getting for links you share – unfortunately they can have a negative impact on the total amount of engagement you get from the links that you share.
Buddy Media reports that posts that contain the full-length URL have a 300% higher level of engagement. From our Tech Savvy Agent sample – we were able to gather that posts that contained the full-length URL had a 61% higher engagement rate than post that contained a shortened link.
The report cites that user are less to click through if they do not know the destination web page. With the rise in Facebook Spam – we believe that users are becoming increasingly suspicious of URL Shorteners.
Best time to post?
The majority (60%) of posts were published between the hours of 10 AM and 4 PM. The peek publishing time is Noon. The report indicated that Brands that published their content outside normal business hours (early morning, after work, late night) had a 20% higher level of engagement.
If you are only posting during the work hours – try posting early morning or late at night and measure the impact that has for your pages engagement.
What days to post?
Although that data was inconclusive, the report was able to provide us with some helpful insight that could help you increase your level of engagement.
86% of all post are published between Monday through Friday – leaving an opportunity to publish content on the weekend when there is less competition for your users attention.
My suggestion is to mix it up – try a few weekend post and see how that impacts your engagement level…if you see improvement then do more of that.
Fans follow instructions
Ask and you shall receive.
If you want your fans to comment, like, or share your content – ASK! Provide clear, simple instructions to your fans to increase your engagement rate.
Always be Asking
Post that ended with a question (as oppose to the middle) had a 15% higher level of engagement. The data we pulled from the Tech Savvy Agent Facebook Page was nothing short of remarkable – post that ended with a question had a 368% higher level of engagement than post that didn’t.
Don’t interrogate your fans
The report concluded that “Why” was perceived as an intrusive question. How, who, what, did, and why had the lowest level of engagement. Where, when, would, and should drove in the highest level of engagement.
Recap:
If you are struggling to grow your Facebook Page, compare your posting strategy to some of the techniques we discussed in this post.
Are you asking enough questions?
Are you always posting during the work hours?
Do you ever post on the weekend?
Are your posts too long and lengthy?
Are you using URL Shorteners?
Are you asking the right way?
Do you have clear “Call to Actions?”
These are simple techniques you can use today to increase your engagement. I do not recommend you implement all of these tips at once, instead, use the tips that resonate with you the most and put them into practice.
Have you been struggling to grow your page? Please comment below!
Related Post – The Science behind how Facebook Pages Grow
There are 22 responses to this post! Join in...
Yes, I get minimal to no engagement on my Business page. I need to find a way to increase my likes but my fan base does not comment on my posts.
Am I boring? I will definitely try some of the above tips. I like the negative connotation of “why”. Good one!
Thanks!
Thanks Cari – I just replied to you on Facebook. A good strategy has a two prong approach. Attract new likes through promotion,using existing connections, and leveraging other marketing channels – at the same time – you need to be focusing on engaging the fans you have with valuable, relevant content. Ideally, doing both at the same time would result in measurable growth!
Great info Chris. Thanks for sharing the stats on your Facebook page.
The only thing I find surprising in this is the 80 character thing. The rest of this makes perfect sense;-)
Off to test, and test, and test…
Inna – 100 million access Facebook via mobile daily…additionally I think people scan content more then ever before.
A great example of a page that is doing this is Buffalo Wild Wings
Check them out at http://www.facebook.com/buffalowildwings
Correction Inna – that number is actually 250 million now (I was using older data)
Hi Jimmy – I ask questions but not enough. I detest URL shorteners, I think of them as people wanting to sell me something LOL. I never use them. I post all day it’s my job, but I post more relevant stuff at 7A, noon, 7P, I tend to post more during the week and on weekends 7 & 7 leaving noon out, it’s the weekend LOL. Yes my posts are way too long but I never ask why and I have had success with the call to action. Thanks for the reminders. Good blog. You know I will borrow things as usual. Carole
Great information – thanks for sharing your analysis, Jimmy & TSA.
Is the MLS app available for Wisconsin? When I heard of it on the Queue, you were pretty new, I think.
Great post, Jimmy – thanks for the information. I am hesitant to ask random questions, but it seems that people who do get the most interaction…???
@Deb – The takeaway isn’t to ask “random questions” – rather it is to ask more direct questions….
Random Acts of Social Media (RASM’s) is not an effective marketing strategy
[...] I recently came across this fantastic article on some of the best practices for social media. 7 WAYS TO INCREASE YOUR ENGAGEMENT ON FACEBOOK [...]
Great post Jimmy. One quick note – if you ask questions you had better be prepared to answer them. I know that sounds silly but if you don’t have the time or willingness to engage your fans then don’t ask questions. An unanswered comment is worse than no comment at all.
@Ross – that is an excellent point Ross….seriously. If you expect your fans to take the time to respond, you better be prepared to engage.
Thanks Ross
Great Data – Always Appreciated!
thanks Toni
Wow. Just wow. Simple. Profound! Those were just the right tips at just the right time. Thanks, Jimmy and Chris.
I love Jimmy Mackin!
Considering your Buffalo Wild Wings example, it’s all relative. Yes they got 4000 comments and likes to a question; however they have well over 4 million fans, so percentage wise that is less than 1%.
Somewhere in all of this is posting about what interests your fans and that is not formulaic.
Still thanks for the tips.
Hi Eliot – thanks for the commenting.
Producing highly relevant content for your fans is a must, you can follow all of these steps and still have 0 engagement if your content is self promotional.
The objective of this post was to help those who are currently creating good content but still struggling to engage their fans.
Paying close attention to the “little things” can pay off big time.
Thanks again for dropping by.
I wonder if paying close attention to the little things like grammar and spelling makes any difference. As in, “If you’re working today hit like,” instead of “If your working today hit like,” and “I have a post I am working on right now” instead of “I have a post I am working on write now.”
Paula your point is made. I can confirm however that even with bad grammar we are getting 50,000+ page views a month all from Facebook. How is it working for you?
Great ideas. Right now we are growing our fan page with a contest for a free iPad, so we have a lot of new visitors to test on. The 80 character limit I did find surprising, even with the mobile angle, considering it is almost half the length of the Twitter limnit.