Facebook engagement refers to any action that someone performs on a Facebook page. This might include liking a post, leaving a comment, sharing one of your updates, clicking a link, viewing a video, etc.

Engagement is an important part of any Facebook marketing strategy as it can lead to better organic reach, which in turn can help drive traffic to your site—or even boost sales for your business.

Read on for 11 smart tips for driving engagement on Facebook.

To get your audience to interact with your content, you have to post it during the times they’re most likely to be using the platform. Perfecting the timing of your social media posts can have a positive impact on engagement.

Know that Facebook’s complex News Feed algorithm can make it hard to get the timing correct, but it’s still possible to increase your chances.

Hootsuite’s social media marketing specialist, Amanda Wood, says:

“For us, Tuesdays are a bit behind other weekdays in terms of Facebook engagement. But 12 p.m. to 3 p.m. is still the most effective window on that day.”
Specifically, Hootsuite’s marketing team determined that:

• The best time to post on Facebook is between 12 p.m. and 3 p.m. Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.
• And on Saturday and Sunday between 12 p.m. and 1 p.m.

Post at these times, and you can expect a greater number of likes, comments, shares, and click throughs to your website.

Of course, the best time to post will be unique for every brand. To determine which time works best for you, always consult Facebook’s Page Insights to track and analyze your engagement data. You can also use Hootsuite Analytics to stay on top of your engagement data.

2. Share valuable content

What does valuable content look like?

In our content marketing 101 guide, we recommend creating and sharing content that meets these five criteria:

1. It is helpful to the audience. Are you actually solving their problem (“this is how you increase your sales”) or masking product information as advice (“how to increase your sales = book a demo with our sales team”).
2. It is rooted in specific, tangible, and real customer problems. Saving time on social media is not a problem. But spending four hours trying to create social media reports for your boss in Excel is.
3. It delivers on its promise. You know the problem (customer wants to drive sales) but does the advice actually show them how to solve it? To make the customer successful, your advice needs to provide concrete steps that helps them solve their challenges.
4. Is it actionable. After reading the content, what can the reader go and immediately apply to their business?
5. You are proud to share it. Is it something you’d share with your friends?

For more on creating and sharing valuable content, read our content marketing guide here.

3. Learn from your successes and failures

Track your performance. Figure out what worked, and do more of that. Determine what failed, and adjust your strategy accordingly.

The great thing about Facebook is that you don’t have to be a seasoned marketer to track what worked.

Case in point: Dr. Mark Sutor, a dentist, began creating Facebook Live videos to give average people actionable information on what to do with various dental issues. With no sizable budget or fancy effects, Dr. Sutor succeeded in getting thousands of views for his videos. With a customer base of approximately 5,000 at most, reaching that many people is significant for business.

For more on tracking Facebook performance, read our guide to using Facebook analytics.

4. Use compelling visuals

Visuals enrich your content and help it stand out on busy Facebook News feeds. Your audience is made up of visual creatures, so using images, graphics, and the like is a no-brainer.

An analysis of more than 100 million Facebook updates over a three-month period revealed that updates with images enjoyed 2.3 times more engagement than those without, according to a BuzzSumo study.

By simply including an image in a post, you get to enjoy at least double the engagement rate. That means double the number of comments, likes, and shares.
Adding images to your content is a quick way to get more engagement.

5. Ask your audience questions

Remember that one of the primary forms of engagement is comments from your audience. This is perhaps the most straightforward way to boost engagement since you’re encouraging responses.

Facebook itself recommends that you ask your audience questions, which is what it terms as an example of an actionable post to increase engagement:

“Share articles or blogs from your website, provide links to your newsletter sign-up form, ask your fans to answer a question or provide their opinions in the comment section of your post.”

Feel free to get as creative as you can with the kinds of questions you throw to your audience. Here are some examples:

• What’s your favorite [fill in the blank]?
• How do you [complete this action]?
• Why do you [like this event or brand]?
• Do you agree with [reference a notable statement, event, person, etc.]?

6. Consider post length

The length of your post is influential to how strong your engagement rate is. Facebook’s character limit for status updates is more than 60,000. Naturally, you don’t want to post anything near that long. Test various lengths and pay attention to what works best for your audience.

Always look to the data. One study by Express Writers found that posts with only 40 characters enjoy 86 percent greater engagement than longer posts.

Do you have something to write that can’t be contained in just 40 characters? If you do, don’t fret. The same study determined that the second-best performing post length on Facebook was 80 characters or fewer, which saw 66 percent better engagement than longer posts.

7. Experiment with different video formats

Video is the key to greater Facebook engagement, so giving your audience a variety of video types is a formula for success. The one factor that’s been driving markedly higher shares is video, according to a Buzzsumo study. It looked at 25 million Facebook posts from the top 10,000 publishers on the platform.

It’s important to leverage this enthusiasm for video by showing your audience various styles of videos.

Here are some ideas:

• Inspirational videos that feature quotes set to music.
• Facebook Live videos that let you broadcast live to your audience.
• Educational videos that teach people how to do something very easily.
• Behind-the-scenes videos that give your audience an informal look at and access to your brand.
• Featured videos that show up on your About section for extra prominence.

8. Drive traffic to your Facebook page from other sources

Send the audience that interacts with you on other social channels to your Facebook page. You could simply include a link to your Facebook page within a tweet or include it on your Instagram bio.

Another option is to display your Facebook page on your blog. There are various WordPress plugins that let you show your page and some of the posts right on your blog. Naturally, your ardent readers who enjoy your content will be curious about visiting your Facebook page, too.

Include a strong call to action to increase the conversion rate of those clicking back to your Facebook page.

9. Join Facebook groups

You’ll increase your engagement when your content surfaces among relevant audiences. These are people who are in the same industry as you or who are looking to solutions to the problems your content addresses.

By joining the right Facebook groups, you get to connect with these relevant audiences. Facebook defines groups as:

“…the place for small group communication and for people to share their common interests and express their opinion. Groups allow people to come together around a common cause, issue or activity to organize, express objectives, discuss issues, post photos and share related content.”

Your participation in the appropriate group can therefore drive traffic and engagement to your Facebook page.

10. Engage with other relevant brands and pages

Engaging here doesn’t mean to overtly promote your page on other brands’ pages—just the opposite! It means to thoughtfully and sincerely post relevant content or comments to other pages and share other brands’ content when it’s relevant to your audience.

By being tactful in your approach, the brands and their audiences are likely to notice and return the favor.

Ideally, if you build a relationship carefully enough with other brands, you may even be able to hash out a mutually beneficial content-sharing agreement. This will give both parties a greater reach and larger audience to engage with.

11. Include a call to action

You can’t underestimate the usefulness of a good call to action (CTA) on Facebook. Studies show that using specific words on posts can help increase conversion rates.

Using call to action terms correlates with higher effectiveness across the board. The average engagement rate per post is greater for posts that use these terms than those that don’t, according to a TrackMaven report. The terms the study looked are “share,” “please,” “now,” and “like.”

Facebook itself introduced CTAs on pages in the realization that encouraging customers to take action drives business objectives.

Based on this data, it makes sense for you to include calls to action on the posts you publish, as well as on your Facebook page.

With these tips, you can expect to increase your Facebook engagement significantly.

Manage your Facebook presence alongside your other social media channels using Hootsuite. From a single dashboard you can schedule posts, share video, engage your audience, and measure the impact of your efforts. Try it free today.

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