How to Increase Engagement on Facebook
Facebook has been around for a while now and remains popular with many users. Even with the new social media networks taking off, Facebook still has a massive user base that social networks have not reached in terms of overall numbers. It is clear that Facebook is still one of the predominant social media networks and, for this reason, continues to be a place where businesses and individuals alike post content in the hopes of getting noticed. Naturally, many of those that want to their profiles to succeed and therefore are wondering how to increase their Facebook engagement rates.
Increasing your Facebook engagement rate over the long term may take some time, and you generally need to formulate a well-thought-out plan and follow through on it. However, following some best practices can make it easier to increase your Facebook engagement rate. With this in mind, we will present 12 ways to increase engagement on Facebook that can be used by Facebook experts who have been active on the platform for years, as well as new users looking to grow their audience.
Facebook Engagement Rate Benchmarking
Before walking about the various ways to increase engagement on Facebook, we should also talk about setting goals. You might initially be wondering what the average engagement rate on Facebook is. Understandably, you are probably expecting a simple answer based on data. However, there are many studies that say they have crunched the numbers and there is a wide variety of answers to this question. However, the good news is that it is not necessary to know what the average engagement rate on Facebook is in general. Rather, you should find out what the average engagement rate on Facebook is for your industry and profiles that are similar to yours.
Conducting a Facebook engagement rate benchmark analysis with a social media tool is the most effective way to do this. For instance, if there are 10 competitor profiles that you want to track, you can analyze their performance by adding them to your social media tool’s dashboard. With the right social media benchmarking tool, you may find that the average engagement rate is, for example, 1%. Now you have a baseline benchmark where you want to be.
Once you know the average, you can determine what a good engagement rate on Facebook would be in your industry or among profiles that are similar to yours. Usually, any engagement rate over the average would be considered “good” but you may also set your sights higher. When determining what a good engagement rate on Facebook should be, it is important to remember that it needs to be realistic and that you have a chance to actually reach this goal.
Ways to Increase Engagement on Facebook
Now that we have discussed Facebook engagement rate benchmarking, we should discuss how to increase Facebook engagement. Like we said before, there are no effortless hacks or ways to get around putting in some work. However, by following as many of the following 12 best tips as you can, you can start to increase your Facebook engagement rate. Below, we will explain these 12 tips in more detail.
- Learn your Audience’s Preferences
- Know your Best Content Formats
- Create High-Quality Visuals
- Always use CTAs
- Be Active and Post Consistently
- Discover the Best Hashtags to Use
- Use Contests, Giveaways, and Polls to your Advantage
- Find out the Best Times to Post
- Reply to your Audiences’ Comments, Questions, etc.
- Join/Create (and be Active in) Facebook Groups
- Research Trending Topics
- Monitor and Analyze your Performance
1. Learn your Audience’s Preferences and Your Area of Expertise
The first step in learning how to increase post engagement on Facebook is to understand what type of content that your audience wants to see. After all, why would you interact with content that doesn’t interest you or piques your curiosity?
So, if you are looking for ways to increase Facebook engagement, ask yourself what your area of expertise is and what is valuable or interesting about your content. Are you providing interesting takes on sports, politics, music, or travel? Do you add anything new to what is already being said?
It helps to have a focus and passion. Your followers can get inspired if you are passionate about something, which can lead to more engagement. Therefore, showing that you are an expert or have something to say about a specific topic can help increase your Facebook engagement rates. Your audience followers you and engages with your content for a reason, so make sure your voice is coming through clearly.
2. Know your Best Content Formats
If you want to know how to increase engagement on Facebook, you should know what type of content formats are associated with higher engagement rates. Do images, videos, or reels historically get the most engagement? How can you find this out?
A no-brainer way to improve your Facebook post engagement rate,is by posting in content formats that correlate with higher engagement rates. Of course, this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t pay attention to creating high-quality content that interests your audience, but understanding what content format generally generates higher engagement rates can be a real game changer. As you can see in the screenshot below, a social media tool can be used to analyze your profile as well as other similar profiles in your field to show you what content format you should consider posting.
This analysis shows that videos have by far the highest engagement rates for the profiles analyzed in this specific data set. While this is only an example of what a content format analysis would look like, it illustrates the usefulness of this type of approach.
3. Create High-Quality Visuals
Social media is a visual medium, and Facebook is no different. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that one of the keys to finding out how to increase engagement on Facebook relates to creating high-quality visuals. This means various videos, images, reels, that catch your attention and are of high quality.
In order to increase your Facebook engagement rate, you should spend real time and effort on perfecting the visuals you produce. There are a number of tools you can use for this as well, and it can pay off to make an investment in one of these. If you want to increase your Facebook engagement rate, then make sure your visuals shine!
4. Always use CTAs
When thinking about how to increase post engagement on Facebook, sometimes rather simply approaches can yield real results. If you are looking for ways to increase engagement on Facebook, you should always be sure to tell people what you want them to do, namely like, share, comment, follow, etc.
It is equally important to tell them how to do what you are asking of them. In other words, when you are looking for ways to increase Facebook engagement you shouldn’t just say to like your post, but say something like “click the like bottom below.”
5. Be Active and Post Consistently
Many people are passionate about topics or issues they care about. Therefore, they generally consume this type of content wherever they can find it. Posting regularly important for improving engagement on Facebook since it can help show people that you have something to say and that they can expect for content soon. For this reason, staying in the minds of people can spur them to be on the lookout for your latest posts and generate interactions with it.
6. Discover the Best Hashtags to Use
Did you know that using the right Facebook hashtags is one of the important ways to increase engagement on Facebook? How, you ask? This is because hashtags can help get your content in front of people that are following those specific hashtags because they are looking for posts about those topics
Conducting hashtag research is a useful way to improve your Facebook post engagement since it can help you find hashtags that correlate with higher engagement from users. Importantly, your content should always be relevant for that hashtag and be of high-value.
7. Use Contests, Giveaways, and Polls to your Advantage
So many companies are looking for ways to increase Facebook engagement on their business pages and would be willing to go the extra mile to make that happen. If you are wondering how to increase engagement on your Facebook business page, you should consider utilizing contests, giveaways, and even polls.
Contests (with a prize included) and giveaways are a great way to generate engagement since you can specify that users like or comment in order to be able to win something. This gives them a strong incentive to engage with your posts. Moreover, many people like having their voices being heard, and polls are effective at doing just that.
8. Find out the Best Times to Post
An important way to increase engagement on Facebook is by discovering what posting times are associated with higher engagement rates. We explain the entire process of how to use a social media tool in order to find these times in another article. However, what we should point out here is that posting at times when people are more likely to engage with that post can is a fantastic way to help increase your engagement rate.
9. Reply to your Audiences’ Comments, Questions, etc.
When it comes to finding out how to increase engagement on your Facebook page, be sure to think about more than just the content you are posting. One of the factors that influences engagement rates is the level of attachment that your audience has to your Facebook profile. In order to foster your community, you should be involved and active interacting with them. This means replying to or liking their comments, thanking them for their questions, and showing that they matter.
Social media community management tools can help you with these tasks. This is especially true of businesses that have large followings and have entire teams dedicated to this task.
10. Join/Create (and be Active in) Facebook Groups
If you want to increase your Facebook engagement rates, you can also look to join or create a Facebook group that relates to topics or industries you are interested in. This can help your profile get noticed and, if your thoughts and perspectives catch the interest of others in a group, this can help them become interested in your posts and content. If the group allows for it, you can also share what you posted in the hopes of getting more people to view it and interact with it.
11. Research Trending Topics
Sometimes discovering how to get better engagement on Facebook revolves around looking for trending topics to post about. Popular topics or trends can emerge quickly, and it is important to pay attention to them.
In this case, increasing your engagement on Facebook could be helped by constantly posting about the latest topic in your area of interest. Luckily, there are tools available to help you find trending topics on Facebook in your country and/or language. So, if you are serious about increasing your Facebook engagement rate, keep your eyes open for what is trending.
12. Monitor and Analyze your Performance
If you want to know how to increase engagement on your Facebook page, you need to be aware of how social media monitoring works as well as the KPIs you want to track. This is because monitoring allows you to see how you are progressing and what may need to change to boost your performance.
Increasing engagement on Facebook is a process, and you may need to alter your content strategy as you go. Moreover, things can change with time or your audience preferences, and you need to be aware of what those changes are. Social media tools can help you to continually monitor and analyze your performance so you can see when changes are necessary.
Review: How to Increase Engagement on Facebook
As we showed above, there are relatively straightforward ways to increase engagement on Facebook. However, some work and effort on your part are required. Having a social media tool at your disposal that provides you with benchmarking and analytics, research, community management, and publishing features can be a big help.
If you are looking for ways to increase Facebook engagement rates for your Facebook profile, Fanpage Karma offers a free 14-day trial of its all-in-one-social media tool.
Fanpage Karma also offers a free weekly webinar that discusses how to use the tool.