As of February 4th 2013, Facebook has officially turned 9 years old. Started out as a way to connect Harvard students back in 2004, that network has now grown into a place where 1 out of 7 people in the world is on.
It is a network that you shouldn't leave out. Facebook is the Big Daddy of social networks. But as much as you want to stand out in that continuously growing crowd of people, there are people out there who are always ahead of you when it come to Facebook engagement.
If you’re looking for an upper-hand or a way to boost your presence on Facebook to help increase engagement, comments, shares and likes. Here are a few tips.
1. Use photos to increase Facebook Edgerank
Here is a simple question, when you’re using Facebook, what attracts your attention? What gives you a good first impression?
For most, if not ALL, of the time the answer probably would have something to do with visuals. Having tested several different types of posts on my Facebook page I found that, despite ‘text posts’ having a further reach, photos are unrivalled when it comes to engagement with your fans.
Here is an example from Leneys, a women's apparel store.
You can see how they are able to utilize photos in their Facebook marketing to attract people to Like and Share their photos.
2. Share quotes with photos
Quotes work! Why? It’s short, it’s straight to the point and people from all walks of life can connect with them easily.
You don’t need to share only motivational quotes. You could share quotes from books, movies, blogs, videos and even tweets. Pair it with photos to get the best exposure for your quotes.
Image credit: icedsoul photography .:teymur madjderey
If you want to create one like the photo you’re seeing above, I recommend you use Pixlr, an online photo editor site that allows you to add, edit and enhance photos.
3. Launch a Facebook contest
A Facebook contest is not only a great way to gain new fans, but it also can help boost your Facebook presence as new fans on your page can help increase engagement and activity on your page.
Facebook contests can also be crafted to help you gain crucial information about your contestants – especially their email addresses. Building a mailing list from your Facebook contest is a necessity and it’s very simple if you have the right third-party app to help you craft your contest.
Facebook contest apps like Binkd comes with an email capture form that fans will need to fill up in order to participate in your contest. Getting their emails is very important as you will need re-engage with them in the future.
4. Use promoted posts
If you have important news or posts that needs more attention than usual, I recommend you use promoted posts to increase your Facebook engagement metrics. With it you’ll be able to reach much more people than you would normally do because of the boost in Facebook’s EdgeRank in favor of the post you selected to promote.
In fact, promoted posts are a great way to re-engage with Facebook friends and fans you've not engaged with in a while. Facebook’s EdgeRank filters all the posts that your connections publish and ranks them according to its relevance with you before putting it up on your newsfeed.
So if you have not interacted with a certain person or page, that person/page will have a lower EdgeRank than your best friend whom you often engage with. When that happens, most likely you will not be able to see their new posts at all on your newsfeed.
This is where promoted posts come in and this is why it is so important that you use it for an especially important message. Even if it is just a simple post wishing everybody a Merry Christmas, you might want to consider using promoted posts just so that you could reach all of your fans and reminding them that you still care for them.
5. Name fan of the week
Remember! It is always about your! As a Facebook page owner or social media manager, it’s your job to constantly find a way to make it about your fans. Arment Dietrich, Inc not only showcase people to follow on their blog for Follow Friday, they would name a Fan of the week on their Facebook page too.
6. Let people promote themselves
Kim Garst is an excellent example of someone who constantly engages with her fans. She was nominated as one of the top 10 Facebook pages in 2012 and I recommend that you check her page as you’ll be able to pick up tons of ideas on how to engage with your fans from her.
Among the many interesting posts she has, one that definitely would help your engagement with your fans is her Fan Fridays. She urges her fans to post links to their Facebook pages on Fan Fridays and this helps business owners to gain exposure for their business and find new people to connect with. At first, people thought that this encourages spammers and the internet deemed it an unpopular move. However as more and more Fridays came along, people finally saw the value of a community coming together just to discuss and connect on a consistent basis every Friday. This further built her page and, in turn, helps build her fans’ Facebook page.
7. Crowdsource
When it comes to social media, there are only a few who does it better than Gary Vaynerchuk. He is someone who can talk-the-talk and run circles around the talk – all whilst tweeting and connecting with people. Gary is an extremely engaging personality on his social media accounts and he is genuinely a person that knows how businesses should use social media. People love him.
He even got his fans to help him decide on the next title of his book.
As you’ll notice, you don’t have to be a huge brand to use some of these ideas to be successful. More often than not you’ll find that the more engaging pages are the small business owners out there. Just remember to keep within the rules of Facebook and you can do well.
What do you think? Have any of you found success using other ideas? Comment in the section below.
I would love to hear and learn from your success with Facebook.