5 ways to encourage interaction on Facebook

Social media is all about interacting with your audience and on Facebook this means your fans. Your posts should be crafted in such a way that they create a reaction from your audience. On Facebook this takes the form of Liking, Commenting or best of all Sharing your posts. The more fans interact with your posts, the more likely it is that Facebook will feature your posts in your fans’ newsfeeds. This is important as it helps increase visibility of your brand.

This interaction is often called engagement by social media experts although for me this is more about creating feelings and establishing an emotional response with your fans. However, there is no doubt that interaction leads to engagement.

Without further ado here are 5 ways to increase interaction on Facebook:

1) Ask questions - It’s a simple but effective technique. Fans like answering questions and can use Comments to reply. A good tactic is to make a statement, for example offer an opinion, and then ask your fans what they think.

2) Keep your posts concise - Twitter’s success is built on the 140 character limit to posts. Very short posts on Facebook tend to create more engagement than longer ones. A recent survey from Buddy Media showed that posts of 80 characters or less had 27% higher engagement rates.

3) Use the full web address - This might seem to contradict point 2 but using a URL shortener on Facebook posts can result in up to 94% less engagement according to Kissmetrics. Fans like to know which website they are being directed to so try and use the full web address.

4) Ask people to engage - Using ‘calls to action’ and action words results in higher engagement. Action words such as Like, Comment, Share, Post, Submit and phrases such as Tell Us and Ask Us work well.

5) Post at the weekend - You might think that business content should only be posted during during the working week. Yet an infographic from Kissmetrics shows that the most sharing of posts occurs on a Saturdays.

You can learn more about interaction and engagement on Facebook at my regular workshops in Cheltenham at £87 per person. Go here for further information and booking or ask me about one to one training.

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