The one metric I most often hear about when discussing Facebook Pages is the number of Likes a Page has received. Why is this metric important? Because it is the starting number to determine how many people you could be reaching on Facebook with each piece of content you publish. Keep in mind that not all of your “likers” will be consuming your content and there will also be a percentage of your “likers” who share your content with their friends, which exponentially increases your reach.
Your “Like” count, however, is not the most important measure of success on Facebook. What you really need to pay attention to is the number of people who actively engage with your Page on Facebook and the content you put out.
1. Ask for their opinion and feedback.
Customers have a perspective on your product or service that no one within your company has and they often have very specific opinions on what you are doing right and wrong. Companies used to spend thousands of dollars putting together focus groups to get feedback from their target audience, but now you have them at your disposal for free right on Facebook. All you have to do is ask.
Be prepared to deal with criticism as well as praise. Also, don’t just ask for the sake of Facebook engagement, you should be prepared to respond to the toughest criticisms and make a concerted effort to make changes based on the feedback you receive.
2. Invite them to share.
It is a fact of human nature that people love talking about themselves. Simply giving your fans an opportunity to promote themselves will garner more responses than you can imagine. Prompt customers to share interesting ways that they have used your product or service whether leaving a comment or posting a photo or video on the Wall of the page.
3. Feature them.
Again this plays into human nature around people loving to be paid attention to and made to feel special. Showcasing one fan/liker each week will do a few things for the engagement on the page. First of all, you will have people vying for the chance to be featured by whatever mechanism you use whether that is sharing content on the page or commenting on a post. Then the featured fan/liker will want to share the great news with all of their Friends on Facebook, many of whom will want to join in on the conversation as well.
4. Play games!
This may sound silly, but no matter how old you get you never outgrow the joy of a game. Try out some different types of games with your audience: polls, riddles, trivia, guessing games, etc. and see what gets them to engage the most. Keep it relevant to the purpose of your Page, but also make it playful.
5. Share good content.
Sharing good content is like the holy grail of social media and it will take some time to figure out, but it’s not impossible. Good content is whatever is relevant to your business, interesting and informative to fans and gets them to comment and/or share the content. Try sharing video, photo and links to see what types of content your fans respond to most. Your fans are probably a lot like you so if there’s something that you found interesting, chances are they will too.
Have you found a trick for getting fans to engage more on your Facebook Page? Leave a comment and tell us how you did it.
Post written by Biana Bakman aka @bianalog. To learn more from fbadz.com, become a fan!