Low Facebook engagement sucks. You’ve put hours of work into creating amazing content that you thought your audience would love. But when you posted it there were… crickets.
You might get a like or two here and there, but people aren’t commenting or sharing as much as you expected them to. Your page is definitely not growing, more the opposite, you feel like you keep losing people. Urgh, we know exactly how frustrating it can be.
You have two options.
- Keep creating and posting as you were. You can keep investing energy into creating all this fantastic content and risk not getting anywhere.
- Take a step back and follow this simple guide to troubleshooting your engagement problem and to kick-start your Facebook growth.
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Troubleshooting Low Engagement on Facebook
There’s nothing more disappointing than creating beautiful Facebook content only to feel like you’re not getting anywhere. After a while, it’s easy to start thinking that you’re getting it all wrong. But that might not be the case! There might be a very simple solution.
1. Are You Posting At The Right Time?
The easiest fix (by far) to optimizing underperforming content is to check whether you are posting at the right times. What do we mean by the right time? This means that you are posting when your audience is active on Facebook and open to hearing your message.
Think of it like a DJ playing their best track when the club is empty. If nobody is there to dance to it, how can they appreciate the brilliance of that song?
Your content might be absolute killer, but if you’re posting it when your target audience is not using Facebook, they might never get to see it. It’s important to remember here that the social media algorithms determine the relevance of content by how much engagement they get shortly after posting. If nobody reacts to your post shortly after posting, it won’t get pushed out to the rest of your audience (long live organic social media, right?!).
So how do you fix this problem? Super easy! You go to your Facebook Insights and then head to “Posts”. Here you will see a clear overview of what days your existing audience is online and what times they are most active. Now you can simply start posting at those times and see your engagement increase instantaneously.
2. Are You Asking Your Audience To Engage?
Another common mistake with organic content on Facebook is forgetting to tell your audience what you would like them to do. If you’re simply sharing a beautiful image of an item on sale but you forget to tell them to click through to shop, how is your audience able to find the sale? In marketing terms, we call this a CTA or a call-to-action. It might feel a bit weird to ask people to like your photos, to click on something, or to comment on your post, but people follow your page for a reason and they tend to be happy to engage.
But you don’t have to create CTAs only to sell your audience something. Who knew that creating engaging content actually means that you could, and should, engage with your audience? Using a CTA can be lots of fun for both you and your audience! Ask them questions about topics that are related to your niche, ask them to tag friends who would love the content, link through relevant content, and more. There are lots of options.
But whatever you do, do not forget about the “Story” feature. Here you can create incredibly engaging content through the use of fun polls, question boxes, and so much more. The added bonus? The market research you can gain from these polls is incredible. Definitely grab your notepad because your audience is going to give you some great ideas.
3. Are You Giving Your Audience Value?
Organic social media marketing shouldn’t be all me, me, me. In fact, it really should be more about your audience than it is about you and your business. Let’s unpack that a bit.
There are many ways that you can create value for your audience, get them to engage with your business more, and in the end get them to purchase more. This type of content could range from short tips that they can save for later, elaborate and valuable blog posts that solve your audience’s problems (you’re reading one of those right now!), inspirational content such as beautiful images and videos that your target audience loves, and much, much more. Make it worth their time to stop by and interact with your posts.
There really is an endless supply of content to be created when you stop thinking about what you can get and start thinking about what you can give.
4. Are You Posting The Right Content to Facebook?
Are you posting the right types of content? What works best? Are you using video? Are you posting too much of the same kind of thing? It’s important that the type of content that you are posting is actually the type of content your target audience likes to consume.
To find out whether your current Facebook audience is connecting with your content, you can dive back into Facebook Analytics. Head to the “Followers” tab and you can see on which days you gained followers and on which days you lost some. You can also review the analytics of each post and plan to post more of what worked well with your audience.
On a side note, we’d love to remind you here that Facebook has put a strong emphasis on video during the last few years. Facebook has even publicly admitted that it will prioritize video in the organic algorithm. Almost any written content, whether it was posted on social media or in a blog post, can be turned into great video – here’s how to do it.
5. Are You Posting Too Much or Too Little?
Consistency is key when it comes to social media success. Whether you enjoy posting once per day or even once per week, as long as you stick to your posting schedule, the platforms tend to reward you with showing your posts to your followers.
We all know that life and business, however, tend to have ups-and-downs. That means consistency can be easier said than done, which is why we always recommend creating a content calendar. This will allow you to prepare content in batches and schedule them in advance so your communications are consistent and they never fall from your to-do list.
If you already have a consistent posting schedule, but you are still wondering whether you are posting too much or too little? Social media is all about testing and improving. Try a month with more content and a month with less content and keep an eye on your analytics. Did you gain followers when you posted less? Or did you lose followers when you posted more? It’s all about finding that magic number that works for your target audience.
6. Are You Having a Two-Way Conversation?
Over the years of building your brand, you have worked hard on creating an audience. These people have been with the business since the beginning or maybe you even bought a few followers to kick-start your follower count. Businesses evolve and there is a chance that your followers no longer consist of your target audience.
It’s important to investigate on a regular basis whether your target audience is still aligned with your current following. If they are not, find out how you can reach them better. There are two ways you can do this. First, ask the question straight up and seeing what responses you get from your followers. Second, prepare to dive back into your analytics.
7. Is it Time to Refresh Your Brand?
It’s easy to get lost in the business, you’re busy serving your clients and developing new products and services. Your business is growing, but it’s not reflecting in your social media growth and you’re beginning to worry that it might start affecting your business growth.
That might mean that’s time to take a step back and work “on” the business rather than “in” the business. Perhaps your brand and/or key messaging has become outdated?
The internet moves at a fast pace and that means that branding and messaging should represent what customers are looking for. Is your ideal client going to be attracted to your branding, key messaging, and website design? If not, it might be time for a rebrand.
Want to kickstart your Facebook growth? Our team can help.
