Ultimate Guide to Increasing Your Facebook Engagement

TABLE OF CONTENTS

FACEBOOK ENGAGEMENT RATES DOWN OVER 20%............................... 3Could the data be misleading? ........................................................................................................ 3

are there other faCtors behind the data? ........................................................................................ 4

FACEBOOK ENGAGEMENT: TALK LESS AND LISTEN MORE ..................... 5a history lesson: marketers Versus the Consumer’s attention ...................................................... 5

talk less and listen more on your faCebook business Page ........................................................... 6

ask Questions and add staff ......................................................................................................... 7

get inVolVed in the ConVersation with a real Person! ....................................................................... 7

Combating the deCline of organiC faCebook reaCh ........................................................................ 7

FACEBOOK PAGE: GET SOCIAL ................................................................... 8what driVes the traffiC to soCial media? Paid adVertising! ............................................................... 9

sPeaking of traffiC: what soCial media VehiCle has the greatest imPaCt on traffiC? ........................... 9

There’s a psychological explanaTion for This, Too.  ........................................................................ 10

how does an organization Create engaging Content for faCebook? ............................................... 10

FACEBOOK ENGAGEMENT: PAY TO PLAY ............................................... 12you’re Probably wondering what is differenCe between exPlore and news feed on faCebook? ........ 12

what Posts haVe moVed? ............................................................................................................. 12

so, what does this mean for your business faCebook Page? ............................................................ 12

WORK WITH VIRAL SOLUTIONS.............................................................. 13

Ultimate Guide to Increasing Your Facebook Engagement 3 WWW.VIRALSOLUTIONS.NET

FACEBOOK ENGAGEMENT RATES DOWN OVER 20%You may have noticed that the engagement rate on your branded Face-book page is down and it’s probably why you downloaded this guide in the first place. The good news is that your brand is not unique to this situation. The bad news is that the consumer is getting tired of what brands choose to use Facebook for.

This is nothing new, in the eyes of the consumer, brands tend to over-run new marketing channels and viewership has a way of letting brands know that their space is being invaded. This issue is no different than when you hear people complain that the highway is too cluttered with billboards, the radio has too little music and too many ads, the Super Bowl is more commercial than it is a football game, etc.

Facebook engagement rates for brands and publishers is down over 22% since the beginning of 2017. Buzzsumo analyzed over 880 mil-lion Facebook posts and found the average engagement dropped from 340 to 264 over 2016.

These sTaTisTics are Troubling! if you oversee your brand’s

social media presence and rely on iT for siTe Traffic, consumer advocacy and overall brand awareness Then you know how criTical facebook is as a markeTing

tactic. In this section, we are going to discuss

the why behind the what. We will discuss the data behind this study, the possible rea-

sons for the drop that relate to your brand and how you use Facebook as well as the ways your brand should approach its use of Facebook as a marketing tactic. Remember, marketing tools

4 Ultimate Guide to Increasing Your Facebook Engagement WWW.VIRALSOLUTIONS.NET

and tactics are constantly moving with the changes to technology and more importantly with the consumer’s expectations and needs.

COULD THE DATA BE MISLEADING?

Data can be deceiving and that could be the case here. While many brands reduced their overall advertising spend from 2016, we do know that brands spent more money on Facebook promotional advertising and this should have increased engagement. However, Facebook also has increased the amount of money it takes to obtain the same reach and more and more large companies are using Facebook with paid ad-vertising and boosted Facebook posts. This algorithmic change means that the organic reach of Facebook declined dramatically which in-turn has a negative impact on overall engagement rates.

Marketing Land reported that “Facebook organic reach is down 52% for publishers’ Pages this year. While on average publishers’ organic reach on Facebook has fallen by 52% in 2016, video and a lower reliance on Face-book has neutralized the pain for some.”

The Chicago Tribune reported, “Facebook’s algorithm isn’t surfacing one-third of our posts. And it’s getting worse”.

AdWeek reported, “Facebook reported advertising revenue of $9.16 bil-lion in the second quarter of 2017, a 47 percent increase over the same quarter last year. Earnings per share for the second quarter totaled $1.32, up from 78 cents during the same period last year”.

ARE THERE OTHER FACTORS BEHIND THE DATA?

• Is the consumer being inundated with content on a channel they view as personal use?

• Has competition increased to the point that the small business is being drowned out?

• Could the data be skewed by the fact that 2016 saw a huge increase in political use of social media and the engagement rate dropped right after the Presidential Inauguration?

Ultimate Guide to Increasing Your Facebook Engagement 5 WWW.VIRALSOLUTIONS.NET

• What do you do with this information if you are reliant upon Face-book engagement to fuel your business?

In the next sections, we will dive into what we believe are the reasons behind the change in engagement rates and suggest tactical moves you must make to maintain a vital link to the success of your online busi-ness. It is easy to start a Facebook page but it is very difficult to grow one with the right audience and have that page deliver results.

FACEBOOK ENGAGEMENT: TALK LESS AND LISTEN MOREWeb site traffic is key to online conversions. Without traffic, an organiza-tion’s web site cannot sustain commerce or put valued content in front of a desired audience. Content can be well written and educating but

without traffic it is ineffective. SEO traffic and Google AdWords is more and more competitive even

in the most well managed efforts. Social media in most cases has surpassed most

tactics as a traffic generating marketing tactic.

however, as we’ve already poinTed ouT, your facebook engagemenT raTes are down.

In the previous section we touched on the decline among Facebook engagement

rates, we discussed the data behind this find-ing as well as the proof that this is not an isolated

incident, the decline appears systemic.

If your business is reliant upon Facebook for customer service, site traf-fic and communication with your perspective clients then this decline is very concerning.

6 Ultimate Guide to Increasing Your Facebook Engagement WWW.VIRALSOLUTIONS.NET

In this section, we are going to point out what you can do about declin-ing engagement rates on your Facebook business page.

A HISTORY LESSON: MARKETERS VERSUS THE CONSUMER’S ATTEN-TION

For decades, marketers have flocked to the latest advertising vehicle, chasing the public to gain attention. In the 1950’s that was the daily local newspaper, in the 1960’s billboards on the new highway system, in the 1970’s Time/Life magazines and the like, in the 1980’s cable television and yellow pages, in the 1990’s the beginning of the web site that lev-eled the playing field for small business. In 2000, it was search engine optimization. In 2010 is was email marketing and social media. The con-sumer has continually fought back by ignoring excessive promotions. Therefore, this continuing decline in Facebook post engagement rates is not surprising.

What has not changed throughout the decades is the reason the con-sumer fights back by vacating where they educate and entertain them-selves. They leave when the self-promotion is greater than the desire to solve a problem or respect the needs of the public’s desire for informa-tion that aids the decision-making process.

TALK LESS AND LISTEN MORE ON YOUR FACEBOOK BUSINESS PAGE

Posting fewer times per day not only concentrates your message but it also forces the company to deliver higher quality. Parse.ly found that 86% of web site traffic comes from a combination of social media and search engines. Think about that. 86%! Does that not mean the public is

Ultimate Guide to Increasing Your Facebook Engagement 7 WWW.VIRALSOLUTIONS.NET

looking for solutions for problems? Yes, we know the answer is obvious.

However, most marketers are under pressure to deliver traffic that con-verts to sales. That pressure tends to lend being overly self-promotional and less focused on being informative, educational or most importantly less conversational.

By posting only one to three times per day an organization will find it is easier to post quality and attend to the true conversation that social me-dia users want. They want to be SOCIAL and they want answers to ques-tions from a real human being without a hidden agenda. Say goodbye to posting five to six times per day!

Now, that does not mean to stop posting every few hours if it works for you and your engagement rate has held at a rate you enjoy. Finding great content takes time, and you don’t always have the time to do that. Just remember that great content is your audience’s perspective, not yours.

ASK QUESTIONS AND ADD STAFF

Over the past few years our marketing agency has introduced and we have seen the addition of automatic Facebook postings tools and robot-ic answering services. Those marketing tactics still have a place.

People love to talk about themselves and have never enjoyed being talked down to like many marketers do when they are too self-serving. Questions are a great way to spark dialogue with fans. It is probably the easiest way and one of the best methods to get people to respond to your posts.

GET INVOLVED IN THE CONVERSATION WITH A REAL PERSON!

However, to keep your audience from bailing on your Facebook page, we highly recommend hiring people who know your brand to actually staff your Facebook page hourly, and to have that staff answer ques-tions and participate in the conversation. That’s right, human interaction in social media, not just hit and run posting helps keep your engage-

8 Ultimate Guide to Increasing Your Facebook Engagement WWW.VIRALSOLUTIONS.NET

ment and conversion rates high! Go figure.

COMBATING THE DECLINE OF ORGANIC FACEBOOK REACH

Social media is the perfect vehicle to gain synergy from organic reach through referrals. When people enjoy engaging with your brand they tend to tell their friends more so on Facebook than via any other tactic.

This has a snowball effect on your lead generation funnel and lowers your cost of doing business. This means that when more people engage with your content, it adds context to your campaigns. The more organ-ic reach that you have, the better your lead generation and conversion funnels will work.

posT less, lisTen more and geT personally involved in The conversaTion on your facebook business page. The phone is ringing! answer iT.

The alternative to all of this is to outspend your competition through Facebook advertising.

Very few of us have an endless pile of money and even if we do there are many other places that money can be of service to benefit your company.

If your marketing team is struggling to maintain a respectable rate of engagement on your Facebook business page, you do have choices, in-crease your advertising spend in proportion to the increase in click rates or attack the problem by doing what has always worked by getting per-sonal. Your audience, through every generation, has always wanted one-on-one personal attention. Something many business owners think is too expensive. Is it?

Ultimate Guide to Increasing Your Facebook Engagement 9 WWW.VIRALSOLUTIONS.NET

FACEBOOK PAGE: GET SOCIALWe’ve established that engagement on Facebook is down over 22%

since the beginning of 2017. Your audience may be tuning out. This isn’t anything new, happens

all the time, especially with a vehicle that reaches the masses gets hit by 30 billion

pieces of content every month.

The problem for businesses is ThaT facebook has become The source for siTe Traffic. noThing fuels online

commerce like traffic! 

Without traffic, the online e-commerce plat-form cannot survive. Content marketing is a

great marketing tactic to increase search rankings and time-on-page but it will not attract the needed traffic by itself. Com-plex and well thought out conversion funnels cannot gain enough data to support the facts it needs to make quality decisions without traffic. SEO has become so competitive that for the average small business it cannot supplant the rankings of others without traffic to the optimized pages.

WHAT DRIVES THE TRAFFIC TO SOCIAL MEDIA? PAID ADVERTISING!

For the very first time in history, with a projected $205 billion Internet ad spend compared to a projected TV ad spend of $192 billion, global internet advertising spend is expected to exceed TV advertising spend in 2017. Social media ad spend is expected to overtake newspaper and magazine ad spend by 2019. ~ John Stevens from Internet Facts

10 Ultimate Guide to Increasing Your Facebook Engagement WWW.VIRALSOLUTIONS.NET

SPEAKING OF TRAFFIC: WHAT SOCIAL MEDIA VEHICLE HAS THE GREATEST IMPACT ON TRAFFIC?

There are 2.79 billion active social media users in the world. This is an increase of 21 percent from 2016.

Facebook now has over 2.01 billion monthly active users. Instagram has 700 million monthly active users. Twitter has 328 million monthly active users. LinkedIn has 112.5 million monthly active users.

Visual content is 40 times more likely to be shared on social media than any other type of content. Facebook status updates with images get 2.3 times more engagement than Facebook status updates without images. People are 80 percent more likely to read content that has colored visuals. Infographics are 3 times more likely to be liked and shared compared to any other type of content on social media. ~ Hosting Facts Ltd.

How does an organization keep its Face-book engagement rate up? Get social and reply to all comments with a human being.

If you want your followers to engage with your Facebook posts, your organization needs to engage with them. People are social beings, Facebook is just a digital tool for people to talk to each other and ask ques-tions that get instant answers from their favorite brands. Your audience wants to be heard! If they are heard they will keep coming back.

THERE’S A PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPLANATION FOR THIS, TOO. 

“The Like is the wordless nod of support in a loud room. It’s the easiest of yesses, I-agrees, and me-toos. I actually felt pangs of guilt over not liking some updates, as though the absence of my particular Like would

Ultimate Guide to Increasing Your Facebook Engagement 11 WWW.VIRALSOLUTIONS.NET

translate as a disapproval or a withholding of affection. I felt as though my ability to communicate had been somehow hobbled. The Like function has saved me so much comment-typing over the years that I likely could have written a very quippy, War-and-Peace-length novel by now.” ~  Elan Morgan on Medium

A recent study discovered a strong connection between Facebook and the brain’s reward center, called the nucleus accumbens. This area processes rewarding feelings about things like food, sex, money and social acceptance. When we get positive feedback on Facebook, the feeling lights up this part of our brain. The greater the intensity of our Facebook use, the greater the reward. ~ The New Psychology

We suggest you go a step further and reply in the com-ments on your organization’s page with your first

name. This adds a personal touch to your re-plies. This makes the commenter feel like

they are in-touch beyond the brand and the brand’s post.

HOW DOES AN ORGANIZATION CREATE ENGAGING CONTENT FOR FACEBOOK?

One of the most iconic brands to ever mas-ter any form of marketing is Coca-Cola. Jon-

athan Mildenhall, former Vice-President, Global Advertising Strategy and former CMO

at Airbnb explains how to generate engaging content. Jonathan describes the challenge of

content creation in an enlightening way, reminding us that “every contact point with a customer should tell an emotional story”.

Your organization’s content that is shared on social media should appeal to your audience’s basic needs which your organization has a product or service that it resolves. Every possible connection made with your orga-nization’s audience should be expressed through a story that speaks to their needs, wants and desires. This belief should resonate with the staff that comments on your social media posts as well.

12 Ultimate Guide to Increasing Your Facebook Engagement WWW.VIRALSOLUTIONS.NET

In Coca-Cola content 2020, Jonathan describes content as that which has substance, matters to the audience not just the brand, is significant to their life, creates a conversation and ultimately creates brand engage-ment.

Ask questions and try to avoid statements unless those support some set of facts within a post. People love to talk about themselves and not be talked down to.

Add infographics and images that people would want to save or share. Images are engaged with more than double that of text alone.

According to this Wishpond infographic, photos receive 53% more likes and 104% more comments than the average post (some research suggests these num-bers may be even higher).

Do not be afraid to be controversial. Your organization has to take a stand and carve out its niche’. You have to be careful not to alienate your fans, however referencing content that deals with a ‘hot button’ or controversial topic will rally your audience to defend your organization and remain a vocal advocate.

Ask for opinions from your audience whenever you are having an internal discussion about your products, services, values or even the effectiveness of your marketing. Show your fans you care about their opinions by asking for feedback.

Get personal and come out from behind your faceless brand. People love to engage with a brand that has a face behind the name. They espe-cially love it when that face gets personal. Consider sharing your person-al photos, trips, vacations or hobbies.

Perhaps Facebook organic engagement is down because content pub-lishers have forgotten how to be social using social media because they are pushed to convert those likes into sales.

Get social! Yes, your organization needs to educate its audience. Yes, your organization needs to be viewed as an authority. However, that does not mean it can’t be social, respectful and human.

Ultimate Guide to Increasing Your Facebook Engagement 13 WWW.VIRALSOLUTIONS.NET

FACEBOOK ENGAGEMENT: PAY TO PLAYWe’ve established the basics, the why behind the what. But the meat of the matter has yet to be addressed fully.Facebook got a facelift. A second news feed was launched, Explore. This change is causing small businesses to rethink their marketing strategy and tactics. As we stated in the previous sections, Facebook historically has been thought of as a way for organic reach to make an impact, not anymore. The scale has tipped Facebook from an ideal organic reach platform to a “pay to play” network.While organic reach is still valuable, statistics show this element of traffic is only reaching about 2% of your followers, and continues to decline. Both organic and paid reach on Facebook have their advantages but it is when you strategically use them together that your brand awareness and online reputation becomes more solid.

YOU’RE PROBABLY WONDERING WHAT IS DIFFERENCE BETWEEN EXPLORE AND NEWS FEED ON FACEBOOK?The change in Facebook’s News Feed has moved posts from the original feed to the Explore feed.

WHAT POSTS HAVE MOVED? The main News Feed is occupied mainly by updates from friends or pages that you follow. Explore consists of posts from sources you are not connected to, but contains content Facebook thinks you may have interest in based on your likes, comments and shares. If you want to show up on the News Feed to new leads or to someone who does not currently follow you, you’ll now have to do so by running a sponsored or paid ad.

SO, WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR YOUR BUSINESS FACEBOOK PAGE?Organic visibility has not yet gone away entirely, but it is certainly dimin-ishing. If your target market in on Facebook, you’re going to have to pay to play.

14 Ultimate Guide to Increasing Your Facebook Engagement WWW.VIRALSOLUTIONS.NET

WORK WITH VIRAL SOLUTIONSIf you are feeling overwhelmed with what’s currently happening with your Facebook Engagement it may be time to get help! Our team of social media experts work with clients daily providing sup-port from reporting and analysis, social strategy, building an effective social media presence all the way to managing and running paid adver-tising and social retargeting.

CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT OUR SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING SERVICES