Tag Archives: social media engagement

Finding Facebook Followers

Increasing the number of followers on Facebook requires a combination of strategies that focus on engaging your target audience, providing valuable content, and promoting your page effectively.

How to build up your following on Facebook

Here are some effective steps to help you grow your Facebook followers:

Optimize Your Page – Start with the basics.  Did you complete all the necessary information in your Facebook page’s “About” section?  Consider this a free outline.  Use a clear profile picture and cover photo that represent your brand or message, and the image you want to convey.  Try to avoid leaving the same image year after year. 

Create High-Quality Content – Find a balance between creating good content and delaying the creation of any content.  In other words, don’t let perfection be the enemy of action.  The key here is to start out making your content accdording to the 3 C’s:  Clean, Clear and Concise.  Long verbose paragraphs about “considering this” or “remember to do that” tend to work well for clickbait articles, but do not sit well with readers who are genuinely trying to learn something about your topic.  Are you posting for clicks (there is nothing wrong with that), or are you posting to build a community? 

A well-written article – without mistakes or grammatical errors – is already “high quality”.  Over time you can further enhance the quality of your work by ensuring that there is a storyline in your prose and by improving your skills as a writer, or videographer, or graphics artist, depending on your platform of choice.  The most important step, however, is to take one.

Having said that, “remember that” sharing valuable, engaging, and relevant content that resonates with your target audience will be key to better engagement.  “Consider” inclusion of informative posts, entertaining videos, inspiring stories, and eye-catching visuals.

Post Consistently – This point cannot be emphasized enough, and beyond quality and depth of content, is the most important factor in gaining the attention of search engines and platform algorithms, which are ultimately the key to ensuring that that your content is made visible in the vast universe of the internet.  Maintain a regular posting schedule to keep your audience engaged and attract new followers. Consistency shows that your page is active, and that you regularly provide your audience with real value over time.  Your audience is always paying – hopefully they will pay you with money, but they always pay you with their time.  The better the content, the more you will earn.

Know Your Audience – Understand your target audience’s preferences, interests, and pain points. Tailor your content to address their needs and preferences.  Think in terms of solving problems.  Are you posting an article for the sake of clicks?  Is that the only problem you are trying to solve?  Think again.  What does your audience need?  What problem are you solving for them? 

Utilize Different Content Formats – With the basics of a consistent theme in place, venture beyond the standard format to experiment.  With the same “high quality” (3 C’s) approach, include images, videos, infographics, polls, live streams, and side stories. Diverse content keeps your audience engaged and interested.

Engage with Your Audience – Viewer comments are gold.  They indicate an advanced reaction, beyond the usual likes and emojis.  If someone takes the effort to write something, it means you have captured their attention.  Reward that attention by regularly responding to comments on your posts and engage in conversations.  When followers feel heard and valued, they are more likely to stay engaged and recommend your page to others.

Host Contests and Giveaways – Organize fun and creative contests or giveaways that require users to engage with your page. This can help increase visibility and attract new followers.  Keep it simple and informal.  Formal contests have rules and regulations attached to them.  False promises will give you many headaches in the future.  Future articles on this site will address giveaways and provide some guidelines.  The key to success is to engage your audience in a fun way, and if you are going to give something away for free, ensure the rules are clear and that there is only one winner. 

Promote User-Generated Content (UGC) – Encourage your existing followers to create content related to your brand and to tag your page.  Reposting UGC not only shows appreciation but also exposes your page to the creators’ followers.

Collaborate with Influencers – Partner with influencers or individuals in your industry who have a strong following.  While influencer endorsement can be expensive, it can also bring a significant boost to attention and notoriety. 

Run Facebook Ads – Invest in Facebook ads to target specific demographics that align with your target audience. Use engaging ad creatives and compelling copy to encourage users to follow your page.

Cross-Promote on Other Platforms – Promote your Facebook page on your other social media platforms, website, email signature, and any other communication channels you use.

Use Facebook Insights – Monitor Facebook Insights to understand which posts perform well and gain insights into your audience’s behavior. Adjust your content strategy based on these insights.

Join Relevant Groups – Participate in relevant Facebook groups to establish yourself as an authority and share valuable insights.  Postings to these forums can have an amazing impact on the number of followers and growth in connections because you are addressing an already-captive audience.  Follow the group’s rules and avoid spamming, because these will never engender respect.  Genuinely add value, and the payment (in their time and money) will follow. 

Share Behind-the-Scenes Content – Offer glimpses of your company culture, team members, and behind-the-scenes processes. This personal touch can humanize your brand and connect with your audience.

Promote Exclusive Offers – Offer exclusive discounts, promotions, or content to your Facebook followers. This incentive can encourage people to follow your page to access these benefits.

Keep doing these on a regular basis, and over time, your skill and efficiency will improve.  Growing your Facebook followers takes time, patience, and consistent effort. Focus on building genuine relationships with your audience, delivering value, and maintaining an engaging online presence. As you build trust and a strong community, your follower count is likely to increase naturally.

Tracking Engagement – More than just likes!

How well is your audience interacting with your content?  The answer to this question will separate the novice social media promoters with the pros.  The good news is, it doesn’t take 10,000 hours to become a pro in tracking your engagement.  Use social media engagement metrics to enable a deeper understanding of what motivates your audience, and to determine how well your campaign is resonating with high-value readers and listeners. 

Because there are so many engagement metrics to track, chances are that if you are a beginner to social media, with enough practice you will begin to see yourself as a winner in at least one of these metrics.  With one win at a time, especially in the early days, you can find further motivation to keep tracking and keep improving your scores over time. 

Here are some common engagement metrics with a description as to how you can benefit from them. 

Likes

  • The most basic of all, and the higher number the better
  • What They Indicate: Likes and reactions (such as “love,” “wow,” “sad,” etc.) indicates a positive (or negative) reaction.  More complex or sophisticated applications enable the audience to choose more than just a like, but also emojis for “love,” “wow,” and “sad” among others.  It is the easiest and most rudimentary way a viewer can react, so not having any “likes” is like putting your audience to sleep. 
  • What to Learn: Content with many likes and reactions lets you know which types of content get the most attention, and with that, you have a basis for replication of future content generation. 

Comments

  • A deeper form of engagement, where the audience is so strongly interested in your posting that they set themselves apart (to show that you have their attention?) by creating new original content in response to your new original content.
  • What They Indicate: Comments show that your posting sparked interest.  Even if you get trolls, you can have the satisfaction that someone bothered to post some nonsense, because they thought their own version of bad taste would be seen by others. 
  • What to Learn: Read the comments and comment back – that is the most effective way to show users that you care about them and want to learn from them.  With a deeper understanding of their sentiments made available through comments and feedback, you can use that to generate more meaningful content in the future, and in doing so, begin the virtuous cycle of interest among your readers, reflected by the interest you have shown them. 

Shares and Retweets

  • Shares and retweets are likes and comments, but turned up a notch.  Shares can amplify your reach and introduce your platform to new potential followers.
  • What They Indicate: More than just a comment, a share indicates that your audience is identifying themselves with you.  A share of a posting means you have become and identity-maker.  This step is a giant leap towards a full-on branding strategy.
  • What to Learn: As always, count the shares to see which comments resonate most you’re your audience.  Go a step further and analyze what type of messaging, visuals, or information prompted users to share.

Click-Through Rate (CTR)

  • CTR measures the percentage of people who clicked on a link in your post.  Are you getting any genuine action from your audience?  What percentage of your audience is entering your universe?  
  • What It Indicates: CTR shows the effectiveness of your call-to-action.
  • What to Learn: A high CTR indicates that your content was compelling enough to drive traffic. Analyze the content and its placement to understand what encouraged users to click through. As with any indicator of success, adjust your content strategy based on these findings.

Engagement Rate

  • Engagement rate is a combination of likes, comments, shares, and clicks relative to your total number of followers.
  • What It Indicates: While it is one thing to have likes, if you are reaching the next level in your engagement effectiveness, you will come to learn that certain customers (or readers, or viewers) will be engaging with you more than once and in multiple ways.  This is your bullseye target audience.  All the lessons you aim to learn from simple metrics such as clicks and likes are now compounded in complexity and, along with that, potential benefits to your future promotional designs. 
  • What to Learn: Similar to the other metrics, you can compare the engagement rates of different posts to identify which types of content perform better. Beyond that, you can begin to piece together certain character traits of your audience.  “People who wrote these types of comments also had a higher CTR, therefore that is the kind of person I’m trying to appeal to.”  Write your own version of that sentence, but with specifics to show for it. 

Mentions and Tags

  • Being mentioned or tagged by users means they’re actively involving your brand in their conversations or content.
  • What They Indicate: This metric tracking indicates an advanced level of identity on the part of your audience, and may indicate that your audience as a whole is growing more sophisticated.  Your reach is now extending beyond simple impressions or single individuals, you are being remembered in other peoples’ conversations. 
  • What to Learn: Monitor mentions to identify opportunities for engagement. Respond to mentions promptly, whether they’re positive or negative, as de facto feedback on your brand, your product, your service and your message.  Target new groups that were not previously on your radar.  Learn from the type of people who mention your brand, and look out for potential surprises – audience types which resonate with your messaging, but you didn’t expect.  What is making them interested?  Acknowledging and engaging with user-generated content can build and foster a greater sense of community around your brand.

Follower Growth Rate

  • Follower growth rate measures how quickly your follower count is increasing.
  • What It Indicates:  a metric for more well-developed and mature campaigns, it is another dimension of likes (which could gradually increase over time) and the audience’s enthusiasm over your content (how many likes in a short period of time). 
  • What to Learn: If your campaign coincides with a significant increase in followers, analyze the content you posted during that period. Determine if there’s a correlation between the campaign content and the growth in followers, and if your determination is that there is a positive relationship, then push that theme like crazy.  At some point, you may experience the thrill of a single posting that, at least in a small way, has gone viral.  You may not be able to replicate this phenomenon on a weekly basis (but you can try), nonetheless, learn what you can and try to identify the ideas you conveyed which so well resonated with your audience. 

Time of Engagement

  • Analyze when your posts receive the most engagement by studying time-of-day and day-of-week patterns.
  • What It Indicates:  This is a tactic for the pros, but essential when your promotional efforts are building a large following.  At this stage in the game, you will be trying to improve your skills not by factors of 5 or 10, but by 10% or 20%.  When you have a large audience, a mere few percentage points can make a significant difference in the volume of revenue (and profit) that you take in from a single post. 
  • What to Learn: Let every word be leveraged to is max!  Optimize your posting schedule and tailor your content to be available when your audience is most open to your messaging.

By closely monitoring and analyzing these engagement metrics, you can gain valuable insights into what content resonates with your audience, which strategies are effective, and how to improve your future social media campaigns. Adjust your approach based on what you learn to continually refine and optimize your social media marketing efforts.