A lot of us spend a good deal of time on Facebook. If you are a blogger, this is one of your sure shot social media tools that you should be using. Facebook has often been under the scanner for changing its policies and rules. Yes, it is a fickle friend! Just when you think you’ve got its working figured out, you hear that they’ve changed the rules about how they display posts. Again. Trust me it IS annoying!
The number of fans and followers on Facebook is huge and with the unlimited flow of content, Facebook needs to establish some ground rules to dictate how and which posts are featured on your news-feed. This is done via the Facebook Feed Algorithm which customizes your Newsfeed based on a number of factors such as:
- Posts with lots of comments, likes and shares
- Trending or ‘hot’ topics
- Viral videos
- Posts from pages with frequent interaction
- Posts with friend activity
This is obviously, just skimming the surface of the extremely complex Facebook Feed Algorithm, but this helps to give us an idea of what kind of content to post to get more visibility and engagement on Facebook. This two part post will talk about how you can maximize Facebook engagement and let it work to your advantage.
Ways to Maximize Facebook Engagement
Get a hold of your stats
If you are a blogger, you are likely to know the importance of stats for your blog. Stats and analytics are a very good way of knowing which posts are popular and trending. When you look up the FB stats, you will get a fair idea of the kind of posts that are popular, when your fans are online so that you can schedule your posts accordingly, the maximum engagement your posts get, and the type of audience that are viewing your posts. Get all this and more information from the ‘Insights’ tab that is located on your Facebook page.
Work with an editorial calendar
Editorial calendar can be used not just for planning your blog posts, but also your social media posts. Once you have the stats of your page, you know exactly when and how to post. It is easy to prepare at least a weekly calendar for your social media posts. Depending on the niche you have, you can set up updates accordingly for your social media pages. Certain niches also see traffic peaking on certain days across the industry, for example business and finance pages see low engagement on weekends.
Keep posts current
Facebook and Twitter have a very helpful feature that you should use to your advantage. The feature is Trending Topics, that lists out what is popular at the moment. Twitter trends are based on your location and what’s trending around you while Facebook shows a generic set of trending topics. Clicking on the list will show you what your friends and connections are saying about it rather than a global coverage like on Twitter. Experts say that while posting based on these topics might not increase your reach, it’ll certainly increase your engagement by making it more popular in your circles.
Post videos
Facebook says that in the past year, the number of video posts per person has increased by 75% and in the last six months, Facebook sees more than a billion video views every single day! Also, videos have more of a tendency to go viral and commented upon, especially ones that are funny or inspirational. Posting a video is more likely to get viewed and shared than a lengthy post about the same topic.
Don’t over promote
Nothing is more annoying than a “BUY NOW” post that pops up every now and then on the feed! Facebook has announced that it will start controlling extremely promotional content from January 2015. Such posts often have language as seen in advertisements, or prod people to buy a product or service. These also tend to put people off, since most people think of these as ads. Avoid these types of posts because it looks like spam and can turn off your audience.
These simple and effective ways will ensure that you are reaching out to the right audience and ensure that you are on the right path to maximize Facebook engagement. Do keep a watch out for the concluding post on this topic.
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