If you’re using Facebook for business, then you’ll no doubt be always looking to make sure that your followers are engaging with your page. No matter how many likes you have, getting that engagement and increasing it is the all important factor.

What exactly is engagement? It’s when a user/follow makes a specific action on your page – literally engaging with your content. This could be a like, a comment, reaction or a share. Not only that but it could also include a “check in”, which is great for businesses like hotels or perhaps beauty salons. Engagement is great because it shows that your followers are interested what you have to say – which reflects well on people checking out your page too.

The better your engagement, the more your organic reach increases. Also, ever noticed when your friend comments on a post of a page you don’t follow? That too – the more people engage, the more your page will be seen by an extended network on Facebook.

So what are our tips to increase your Facebook engagement?

1. Stop sell sell selling – start sharing, teaching, inspiring, entertaining. This will increase your engagement but also build a great reputation around your brand too, as someone that wants to collaborate, entertain, share, advise. Think more about providing useful and informative content to your followers rather than just selling your services or products – think about what can make them engage with you, laugh with you, or learn from you.

2. Keep your content short – we tend to scroll down our newsfeeds, most often on mobile phones – long content isn’t going to be read in full so keep it short and snappy. Include a video, picture, link or GIF if you can.

3. Use images where you can – if you’re not going in for a Facebook Live or sharing a link, then you must share an image! It’s so easy these days with mobile phones and filters to take a great looking image, and posts with images always get better engagement than those without. Facebook itself suggests a customer image or close up of a product. From experience, images including myself and Emlyn out and about always get above average engagement.

4. Facebook Live – utilising Facebook live or uploading videos should see you at higher engagement rates than images. So try and think out of the box and utilise video as much as possible. Facebook Live is great because anyone following you will receive a notification once you start broadcasting, and can engage with you while you broadcast too.

5. Always reply to your followers – might be an obvious one but we visit so many pages where comments and questions are never answered! It’s actually a bit rude, even just a like of the comment acknowledges you have read it, but if you can, reply back! It’s a great way to show off your brand personality.

6. Be a part of Facebook Groups – we wrote a blog about changes to groups at the start of 2018, and more than ever we encourage all Facebook for business users to get onto the groups that are relevant to them. It’s a good way for you to expand your network, show your expertise and hopefully make some sales.

7. Update your page and settings often – Facebook changes so often that the way you or your followers view you page changes too. If you check out your settings and edit your page often, you’ll be able to make sure you’re basically up to date with the latest changes. This might include for example the call to action button under the cover photo, or new categories being add to the page type. In terms of engagement, Facebook are always pushing for businesses to join them on their platform, so you’ll find most changes will be very much focused on increasing engagement.

8. Not just for Facebook – get your page verified. It just adds that extra bit of professionalism and trust, showing your followers or visitors that you are a page they can trust. Visitors may be more likely to engagement with you as a verified page.

9. Ask questions – this is a great way to increase engagement on Facebook. Get your community and followers involved by asking them questions. Perhaps you’re a florist and want to know what workshops people would like over the next 12 months? Ask them! However, avoid ENGAGEMENT BAIT. These are posts asking for likes and shares or reactions. Facebook will spot them as engagement bait and penalise the post.

10. Use Facebook Stories – if you’re an Instagram user than stories is old hat for you, but if not, it’s a great way to push forward your content or information from the past 24 hours to the top of a visitors Facebook app. Stories is much more informal, allows you to post as often as you like, without worrying about spamming your followers. You can also be more personal and “in the moment” on the stories, which will improve how people view you as a brand.

Top Tip: Have you ever noticed when you start writing a new post on Facebook that there are many many options below? Things like create poll, start live video, add milestone etc. Utilise these, because quite simply, Facebook wants you to.