As the world’s third-most visited website with 2.41 billion monthly active users, Facebook remains to be the world’s leading social media platform. With Buffer reporting that 93.7% of businesses are active on Facebook, the conclusion is clear: if your brand isn’t on Facebook, chances are you’re missing out on a lion’s share of the market.
The key to making social media marketing work for your brand is to give your audiences what they want—content that is engaging, which helps you build positive relationships with your audience.
Here are the different content types you can choose from to increase your Facebook engagement rates.
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Images
Images play a significant role on Facebook: Buffer reports that images made up 18% of top posts on Facebook. Meanwhile, every minute on the internet, 15,000 GIFs are sent on Messenger and 46,200 Instagram posts are uploaded.
The key to leveraging images for good engagement is to utilize different kinds of images—from well-made infographics to high quality photos—that are compelling and offer value to your target audience. Things like putting a blog post’s key takeaway into a quote graphic, using a funny meme to promote your brand, or even creating an infographic that summarizes data from your long-form content can draw eyes to your Facebook page and become jump-off points for reactions and comments.
Like with all content, selecting the type of image you use should be based on your ideal buyer personas—what kind of images will work for their needs? What are they most likely respond to? Otherwise, not even the most stunning photo will draw them into engaging with your posts.
Hubspot uses their position as experts to create graphics on a statistics relevant to their audience—flexible work. By creating a visual representation of this fact, users are drawn in to contribute their own thoughts on the concept itself, creating the possibility of even more engagement between Hubspot and other users.
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Quality Video Content
Videos are one of the most successful content formats on Facebook, with Facebook ranking as the second most popular video property (Google being the first). In fact, Buffer reports that video posts on Facebook get at least 59% more engagement than other post types.
In addition, 62% of people have reported being more interested in a product after seeing it on a Facebook video. Aside from providing quality video content, your brand has the opportunity to sell to its audience in a more compelling manner. It’s no wonder that just about everyone is eager to create their own video content.
With the internet greatly impacting an individual’s attention span, finding the right video length can help your audience continue to engage with your videos without overwhelming or boring them. Buffer reports that the optimal video length for content is between 30 to 120 seconds. Additionally, making videos that are mobile-first—light, high-quality, and playable without sound—is more likely to drive band lift and message association by up to 27%
Samsung Philippines showcases the latest iteration of its flagship phone—the S20 series—through a short video clip. This clip highlights the S20’s state-of-the-art camera and all of its functionalities all in a stunning, bite-sized video. Not only does it provide information on the model itself but it’s impressive on its own, making their audience more likely engage with it.
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Evergreen Content
Evergreen content is highly valuable in increasing engagement rates in Facebook. It’s practically timeless and will remain relevant for your audience for a very long time. This includes tips, how-to articles, guides, lists, interviews, and the like. For as long as it’s helpful, education, and thought-provoking, your evergreen content will drive Facebook engagement.
Here, Harvard Business Review promotes its article “Why We Procrastinate When We Have Long Deadlines” with a CTA to view all its featured articles on their website. Procrastination continues to be a relevant topic, especially to a productivity-driven audience, making it effective even long after its been shared.
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Quick Questions
The quick question approach is simple and doesn’t require too much time or effort from your audience. Not only does it drive engagement, but it also helps you get to know your target consumers better. Make it short and simple. Listen to what your followers are saying, and respond to their comments. This will help build a lasting relationship.
Social Media Examiner uses a content link to an article on new Facebook Live features captioned with a question: “What should marketers be planning for in light of these changes?” This question allows their audience to respond thoughtfully and opens the floor to dialogue, driving engagement with their post even further.
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Facebook Polls
Similar to the quick question approach, Facebook polls generate engagement rates by asking users to answer an easy question. Ever notice how Facebook users like to ‘crowdsource’? Take it up a notch with the interactive interface of polls. Aside from posts on pages and groups, Facebook polls can now be embedded into video ads as well as stickers on Facebook Stories.
Ayala Malls uses polls in its video ad to get customers to choose between products available from their retailers. Playing into a quiz-type format makes users more than happy to cast their vote and provides Ayala Malls with insight on their own audiences, based on the vote they’ve made.
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Company Events
Facebook Events also help you generate engagement. Once your page publishes an event, it becomes the discussion thread of interested followers and guests, which may boost your followers’ activities.
At the same time, it helps you promote your actual business event for a specific target audience. Update your event page, ask questions, conduct polls, respond to comments, and give your audience something to look forward to by posting marketing materials like teasers, and videos. Use it to let your followers know what to expect and make sure to deliver what you promise. Better yet, exceed their expectations.
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Promos and Discounts
Buffer’s analysis of 2019 Facebook marketing content found that posts that get the most engagement are often either inspirational, funny, or practical. Freebies, promos, and discounts are offers that a lot of consumers find hard to resist.
Makeup brand KVD Vegan Beauty takes advantage of the artistry of their products in photos in order to make announcements on sales and discounts. Not only are users drawn in by the gorgeous product photo, but KVD Vegan Beauty can also use the product photos to link back to the products themselves on their website. This lets the users be aware of a sale occurring while also bringing them one step closer to the product, should they choose to engage with the post.
Wrapping Up
Finding the right kind of content is mainly dependent on what your target audience best relates to and are likely to interact with. Once you’ve got that down, it’s a matter of creating high-quality content that fits your strategies.
Think your Facebook content is missing something? Avail of Spiralytics’ content marketing services today and get results that deliver!