10 Facebook Business Page Tips for Better Engagement in 2017

Setting up a Facebook page is easy. Persuading large numbers of people to like your page and engage with you is much harder.

But thanks to a great article written by Anna Gervai, digital director at Tenfold Creative, we know there are ways to get people first to see and then to like, comment and share your material.

But before I divulge those, let me share a fact that if you own a Facebook business page is likely to stop you in your tracks. And, that is:

Less than 9% of your followers will actually see your posts and updates. That’s thanks to the Facebook algorithm which rewards some pages and penalises others.

The answer, says Anna, is not to pay for Facebook advertising or post boost, but to improve your content.

10 Easy Steps to Better Facebook Content

1. Every bit of content you post on every channel or platform (blogs to Facebook) must be unique. Copying your own material or that from other sources is counter-productive. Instead, rewrite your articles, posts or blogs every time you want to post them in a new place. (This article is an example of that. Reworking material from another source, in this case Anna, with appropriate attribution via links back to the original. This article is a summary of the content, the original article has much more detail and lots of examples. It is also an entertaining read.

2. Tap into trending content – if there’s a big event that your fans/followers are talking about, get in on the action and bounce off it but without infringing copyright. This could be a major sporting or cultural event (an All Blacks test match or Adele concert), the four seasons (especially at the beginning of each), a local or national news item that has sparked interest, or anything topical which is being commented on, liked or shared on Facebook. Two good places to find this: Reddit and Twitter.

3. When Facebook introduces a new feature, adopt it quickly and use it often. Facebook will reward you by showing your posts to more people. Also use videos, animations, giffs, 360-degee photos and slide-shows – followers are more likely to be shown these.

4. Asking questions in your posts rates highly. The same applies to using giffs/emoticons.

5. Do what works on other Facebook pages. To do this you need to monitor similar businesses in your niche. Things to look for: what inspires engagement (often questions, images and videos), best posting times, the right post length, directly loaded material (rather than shared from YouTube etc), and article length (hint – long copy outperforms short).

6. Be a giver, not a taker. Talk about your community activities and the organisations you support (if you don’t, you need to). Never underestimate the pulling power of cute animals.

7. One of the best-kept secrets of the internet is the rise in numbers of people wanting to do things for themselves. DIY combined with video is a Facebook winner.

8. I’m not a fan of this myself but Anna says, “Inspirational content, especially a beautiful image with a heart-felt or motivational quote, really does work for getting likes and shares, and therefore reach.” She also recommends including funny quotes, puns and memes.

9. Share useful information that adds value, upskills and teaches interested people.

10. Your biggest resource may be your fans. Ask them to post content like photos, ideas and tips which you may be able to repurpose for use again later.

Once again, you can find the full post (which I thoroughly recommend reading) here.

Having shared these tips, it may pay to cover the basics just to ensure your page has everything it needs to be successful.

Facebook Marketing Basics

First, you need an interesting cover photo. This is the large one at the top. Change it regularly to keep interest high.

Make sure your company logo displays properly in the square box to the left of your cover photo. If it doesn’t, change it because this will be seen all over Facebook.

Is your About page fully detailed? Complete the Story section with a nicely written blurb about you, your company, what it does and what it stands for. Check that all the details – contact, opening hours etc – are all up to date and displaying correctly. The last thing you want is to be shown as closed when you’re not.

Update the Services section so people can quickly and easily see what you do.

Hustle for reviews. A business with 5 stars outperforms businesses with no stars in the searches.

Have a visual page with plenty of photos of what you do, happy clients and places your work.

Be a good net-citizen and share other pages and posts on your own even if that page doesn’t follow you. They may see your share and choose to return the favour.

And, of course, post plenty of updates, photos, videos and other material. Don’t just promote your products or services, vary your posts so that some are entertaining, some are visual and some are educational.

Finally, don’t leave your Facebook page up to someone who doesn’t know and understand your business intimately, who doesn’t have a sound grasp of grammar, spelling and vocabulary, and who simply isn’t qualified for the job. Your Facebook page is far too important for that. If you don’t have a suitable person in-house, we recommend outsourcing. We recently came across Nudge Marketing who are well placed to help companies gain more traction with their Facebook pages.

Facebook Marketing Stats

Because, make no mistake, social media marketing is an important ingredient of any company’s marketing recipe. A recent study by Salesforce in Australia found that 77% of marketing leaders are already using social media, with a further 15% planning to add it in the next 12 months. 66% also plan to increase their social media marketing spend in the next year even though it already tops the spending for all marketers.

All of which just underscores the necessity to have a well-functioning Facebook page in your business.