By now you probably know that Facebook admitted that pages that do not advertise will lose out on visibility.  That being said, brands and businesses should not ignore Facebook as a marketing platform. It is still valid, it is still being used, and it is still possible to get organic engagement…it just takes a bit more work. We’ve put together tips to help you increase organic engagement on Facebook so that you can see an actual ROI from your posts.

How to Increase Organic Engagement on Facebook

Tag Pages

Facebook page tagging is such a powerful tool. Basically, when you tag another Facebook business page, they get a notification. This is great, because they may get curious, click over to check out the post and then engage it.

However, be smart about this. Don’t use this as a spammy method for engagement. Make sure that your post is relevant and useful to both the pages mentioned and your audience.

If you really want to increase your organic engagement, DM the page in question. Tell them that you mentioned them and that you’d love to see some engagement on your page from their team. The people who are probably working for the other company page should be a similar demographic to your audience…so getting them to engage your page will only help you to get the Facebook algorithm to work for you.

Gorgeous, But Simple Images

Text only updates don’t get as much interaction as image posts do on Facebook. It makes sense. Images take up more real estate and are eye-catching. Use your images as bait to get people to engage your post and to take an action. Make sure your images are bold & eye-catching and that you include text that gives your audience a quick view into what they should expect when they engage.

Interact

It is known that the more interactions on a page, the more the Facebook algorithm is positively affected. Make sure that you reply to each interaction individually.  While you’re at it, personalize the responses. This will build a personal relationship with the commenter and possibly transform them into a brand ambassador.

Share to Facebook from Your Business Instagram Account

Facebook owns Instagram. Instagram allows you to share images and stories directly from Instagram to Facebook. Start doing that immediately. You will see that Facebook will give those posts a nudge in the right direction when it comes to engagement.

Upload Videos Directly to Facebook

Facebook wants to compete for your eyeballs and nothing scares it more than all the time you spend on YouTube. If you upload video directly to your Facebook business page, you will see that these posts perform the best out of any others you publish. Go ahead, give it a try and find out. Just check out the above post from Retro-Stage, they earned 18,000 views and got plenty of reactions, comments and shares.

How to Manage Your Brand’s Social Media

Socialdraft is an all-in-one social media tool. It was made with ease of use in mind and to make team collaboration easy. With Socialdraft you can:

• Schedule posts to Facebook pages, LinkedIn pages, Instagram & Twitter accounts, and Pinterest boards
• Set up people in your company with different permissions, so they can collaborate but you keep control
• Pull reports to keep an eye on your growth
• Engage your audience
• And much more…

Start your risk-free trial of our social media tool today. And if you have any questions, open up a chat and ask.

By now you know that Facebook is almost always pay-to-play. While this is true, it does not mean that you can ignore the platform for marketing. It is incredibly effective, and although organic reach and engagement rates have been declining since 2014 (it had dropped to 6% –  a decline of 49 percent from peak levels the previous year). In 2018, organic reach levels had dropped to 1.2% and organic engagement dropped to an average of 0.6% in 2017.  That does not mean you have to give up.

How to Increase Organic Facebook Engagement

Plenty of brands are able to pay to advertise to reach their desired audience. Other brands – particularly small businesses – don’t have the budget or don’t have the time and know how to make this kind of investment. Don’t panic. Organic reach is not dead, it dropped – but if you are a smart marketer, you can still earn those eyeballs organically.

What is Engagement & Why is it Important?

Facebook “engagement” essentially consists of three components:

• Likes
• Comments
• Shares.

Comments and shares are the most valuable and carry the most weight as legitimate forms of reach, but it is not as simple as it seems.

Post engagement plays a large role in WHO sees your posts because it is a major factor in Facebook’s algorithm. The formula determines whose News Feeds your posts get displayed in and ultimately, how many users you’re able to reach.

Facebook values comments on posts that come from conversations between Facebook users. Particularly if they are friends, so trying to gain the system with unnatural comments won’t work. We’ve outlined 14 different tips to help you get more Facebook engagement so you can increase your reach and actually see an ROI from your efforts.

14 Tips on Increasing Facebook Engagement

Use Engaging Images, Particularly Videos

Photos get more engagement than text posts, but videos (particularly videos that are uploaded natively to Facebook) get the most love from Facebook. Why? Facebook is competing with YouTube. If you create a video it will be prioritized over other types of content.

Besides format, keep a few other things in mind:

• Keep images clean & easy to read & understand
• If possible, share photos of your customers at your place of business or using your products. Tag them and you will see engagement skyrocket.
• Green and blue-grey are the two colors that perform worst on Facebook.
• Bright colors like aqua, bright red, navy, and chartreuse work best.
• Landscapes with little activity don’t perform as well.

Share Exclusive Discounts and Promotions

This still works.  Offer special deals and perks to your customers to keep them interested and to drive sales. Just make sure to make the deal actually enticing. When you craft your posts, include call-to-actions with links to the most relevant page on your website.

Post on Sunday

Sundays are great days to post, followed by Saturday. Thus, posts on Saturday and Sunday will get more engagement than on the weekdays, people are home, relaxing, and they will have a little time to browse Facebook without thinking about work. Grab them while they are in this state and you increase your chances of engagement.

Engage

The more interactions on a page, the more the algorithm will work in your favor. Make sure you reply to each interaction individually. While you’re at it, personalize the responses. This will build a personal relationship with the commenter and possibly transform them into a brand ambassador. Ask your audience to share their thoughts and feedback on your product and services. This is another way to listen to your customers and improve your business. Posting content that shows you took their feedback into consideration can build customer loyalty and show you value their ideas. There are a few things to keep in mind here:

• Geo-location – if your business is local, Facebook wants to see that locals are engaging. It tells their algorithm that the content is good for people in that area and will serve it to more of your fans in that area.
• Get conversations going – Facebook values conversations between people on the platform. If you can craft a post that gets people talking to each other, Facebook will send your post to more newsfeeds.
• Timeliness – Speed of engagement matters. The quicker people are commenting and talking to each other after you post, the more the Facebook algorithm will kick in in your favor.

Remind Fans to Share

This one can be tricky since Facebook does not want you asking for favors on the platform. However, you can be really smart about how to craft your posts so that you can get people to share your content. Sharing doesn’t always have to originate on Facebook. Make sure to optimize your website to make sharing to Facebook easy for your audience.

Post Regular, Fresh Content

If you don’t put in the time to maintain your Facebook page, it will do little to nothing to help your business. When using Facebook as a marketing platform, a considerable amount of time is required in monitoring feedback posted to your Facebook Page, and keeping your page updated with fresh content. You can’t expect to get likes if you leave questions unanswered and fail to encourage conversation. Use a social media scheduling tool to schedule your posts and then make sure that either you or someone on your team is ready to monitor the action around it.

Get People to Engage by Asking Questions

People want to have their voice heard. This includes your customers. So go ahead, ask for their opinion. Need some ideas? Here goes:

• Ask customers to help you name a product
• Ask them to describe memories and moments associated with your brand.

When Skittles asked fans to describe the moment they opened a pack of the candy, the post received over 5,000 interactions. Keep your questions simple. Relate questions to specific consumer lifestyles, such as where or how they use your product. Monitor your customer feedback on Facebook posts and comments, Twitter mentions and emails to find question topic ideas.

Fill in the Blank

Use a short sentence with one word missing to generate a significant amount of comments, likes, and shares. Pringles used a fill-in-the-blank post to connect their chips with a relaxing summer holiday. A bonus of this tactic is that Pringles got a snapshot of their fans’ product preferences by monitoring the comments. Use fill-in-the-blank posts as a two-pronged engagement tactic: interact with your online community and get to know them better for future marketing campaigns. Use the post tactic in conjunction with a specific event, such as a summer holiday or a family ski trip. Awkward or funny situations get people to engage on a more personal level.

Don’t Use Hashtags on Posts

Posts on Facebook that include a hashtag receive less engagement than those without hashtags. Although hashtags serve to categorize content on Twitter and Instagram, they impair engagement levels on Facebook, so just leave those out.

Increase Engagement By Posting Images via Instagram

Instagram is a Facebook property, as such, Facebook prioritizes Instagram posts that are shared directly from Facebook to Instagram. It’s super easy to use too, just takes one click.

Get Your Team Involved

So…remember how we spoke about engagement. Get your team ready. Have your co-workers who are not admins of the page ready to engage EACH OTHER on your posts as soon as they come out. Your co-workers are probably similar to your target audience and in your geo-location – so they are a great sample audience for the Facebook algorithm to clone.

Best Time to Post

There is NO one best time to post. Seriously. You need to dive into analytics to find the best posting time for your brand or business. Then, you need to test posting immediately before, on the dot, and right after. Keep testing until you figure out the time that gives you the best results.

Only Upload Source Videos on Facebook

Publishing videos directly to Facebook will get you the most engagement. Do not share links from YouTube or other video sites.

Short Post Descriptions Get the Most Interaction

The shorter the description you write for your post, the more your interactions you will get. Of course, there are exceptions to the rule, but for the most part, people on Facebook have short attention spans and want you to get to the point, so do it…and do it in 50-140 characters.

How to Manage & Grow Your Social Media Accounts

Socialdraft is your all-in-one tool for Social Media management. Socialdraft allows you to:

• Schedule posts to multiple Social media accounts including Facebook pages, Twitter Accounts, Instagram accounts, Pinterest Boards & LinkedIn business pages
• Have multiple people create and post content (and let you control what gets published)
• Pull Reports
• Engage
• and much more

If you’re curious about how Socialdraft works, take us for a risk-free trial. Have questions, just ask by opening up a chat?

Know what makes me cringe more than anything? When someone asks if they should buy fake Facebook fans. You’d think by this day and age people would have learned. The worst is when a brand new social media manager picks up a client to find that there are 50,000 fans who “are” all gorgeous blondes named Misty but live in Pakistan. Fake Facebook fans weaken the integrity of your brand AND harm your business. Fake Facebook fans don’t contribute to higher engagement, so Facebook punishes pages with a lowered organic reach. If you find yourself in the position where you will be removing unwanted fake Facebook fans, make yourself a tea and read on. This piece will make your job a whole lot easier.

3 Tips for Removing Unwanted Fake Facebook Fans

Facebook is constantly updating their news feed algorithm to reward pages that get higher engagement. The latest update rewards those pages where people engage in conversation with each other on posts.  Pages that create content that encourages this type of engagement will end up with greater visibility in the news feed. The updated algorithm also punishes pages that contain limited fan engagement, poor content, and like baiting with a loss in news feed positioning. That means if you are a business or social media manager who is marketing a page with fake Facebook fans, you need to get on a clean-up mission asap. Let’s get down and dirty:

Decide if it’s Worth the Effort

Ultimately, you want to remove fake Facebook fans and avoid the Facebook slap. You have a few choices:

• Remove the fake accounts
• Transfer your brand to a new Facebook page
• Ignore the fake accounts.

Depending on the number of fans you have, finding and removing fakes can be a long, tedious task; especially if you have thousands upon thousands of fans.

A good rule to follow is if your page is performing well and your posts are appearing in the news feed, there’s no need to stress about the fake fans right. If you have 50,000 fans and only a small percentage is fake, you can probably ignore them.

However, if you have noticed poor reach and limited engagement, you gotta make a change. Whether you have 50 fans or 50,000, you need to find, remove, and ban the fake users.

Find, Remove & Ban Fake Facebook Fans

Go to your Facebook page, then:

Settings > People & Other Pages

Then inspect fans that look suspect (have no profile picture or are incredibly beautiful). Once you click through, if they have little engagement or seem to be posting merely spammy things, they’re most likely not real Facebook fans.

This is where things get tedious. Check the box next to the person’s name. Then check on the gear icon, then either “Remove from Page Likes” or “Ban from Page”.

Future Proof your Facebook Page

Once you’ve removed the fake Facebook fans, you’ll want to prevent this from happening again. Begin by setting restrictions on certain countries that are known for fake followers such as Pakistan, Bangladesh, and the Philippines. This is something you should absolutely do if you are a local business. Play with age restrictions as well.

How to Manage your Facebook Pages & Groups

Once you’ve done all that cleanup, you’ll need to work on a new strategy to get your real Facebook fans engaged and talking. For that, you’ll need a great tool. Socialdraft is an all-in-one social media tool for teams. With Socialdraft, you can:

With Socialdraft you can do tons on Instagram such as:

• Schedule posts to Facebook business pages & groups
• Schedule posts to Twitter & Instagram accounts, Pinterest boards, and LinkedIn business pages
• Set up team members with different permissions
• Pull reports
• Keep an eye on your online reputation
• And much more

If you’re ready to take us for a spin, click here. 

One of the questions we get most from users of Socialdraft is what to do to get more engagement on Facebook Pages. Today, we’re going to outline some Facebook Engagement Tips you may not already be taking advantage of. Like what you see? Share it on Social and spread the love.

Facebook Engagement Tips

1. Keep things short. Posts that have less than 50 characters get significantly more engagement.

2. Post when everyone else isn’t posting. If you post when there is less competition, you’ll get more engagement.

3. Video, video, video. Facebook is currently favoring video content (both live or recorded), so you will get more organic engagement by using this type of content.

4. Optimize your images for desktop and mobile. 90% of Facebook users are accessing it via mobile (Data via The Next Web). That means that you NEED to make sure that your images look great on mobile.

This is tricky because Cover Photos are two different sizes on desktop & mobile phones (820×312 vs 640x260px).  Our designer Jan (who’s awesome) adds a space of 134 px on either side (with text in the center) to make them look best. If you need assistance with this type of task, message us about our managed services.

5. Post questions. These will get more likes than other types of posts and are likely to get more comments as well.

6. Use the new Reminders feature. If you’re using a dashboard like Socialdraft to pre-schedule content, you probably don’t need this feature. This is great so you don’t forget a specific holiday or sale event. To set a reminder go to > Page settings > Reminders

7. Make your Profile a Video. This is not yet available to all pages, but if you have this feature you better take advantage of it. Some pages can either record or upload a 7-second video to use as their profile video. No more boring pics since this loops continuously. This needs to be done via your mobile phone.

How to add a profile video on Facebook

-iPhone

Tap your page’s profile picture
Select “Take a New Profile Video”
Choose a video or record a new video
Select  Use

-Android:

Tap your page’s profile picture
Select “Take a New Profile Video”
Select “Next” and tap the bar at the bottom of the screen
Choose a thumbnail & click “Use”

8. Automatically add captions to video ads

This will seriously increase your views. Think of all the people who want to watch your video but don’t have headphones nearby. Adding captions allows them to turn off the sound and watch without disturbing anyone else. Note – this is only available for video ads.

How to use Automated Video Ad Captions

– You must do this via Power Editor

Upload Your Video and when done click “Select”
Click on the “Generate Automatically” drop-down.
Now you can either “review manually” or let Facebook review them.  Review them to make sure they are perfect.

9. Use your Desktop to broadcast live video

Facebook has changed things so you can now broadcast from your desktop, not just mobile. Create your status and choose “Start a Live Video”.

10. Bring in Live Contributors

This is a great way to get influencers involved in your live broadcasts. The admin of a Facebook page is now able to assign this title to others. The possibilities here are incredible.

I hope you enjoyed these Facebook Engagement Tips. Test them out and let us know your results. And, if you are looking for a social media tool to help you with your pages, check out Socialdraft. We offer a risk-free trial during which you can test out all our features including:

• Drag & Drop Calendar
• All-in-One inbox
• Campaigns
• Bit.ly compatibility
• Facebook & Twitter Reports
• CSV Bulk Scheduling
• Post Duplication
• Tasks
• Instagram tools
• and much more

If you aren’t taking advantage of everything that Facebook has to offer today – including the almost 1,000,000,000+ members that log into the platform on a daily basis, but all of the other marketing opportunities that this social media platform provides – you may be at least a bit crazy.

Savvy entrepreneurs and smart marketers have long understood the value of getting more likes on Facebook, but now all entrepreneurs and marketers are starting to wake up and realize that it is not about likes. It is about engagement. Why? Because engaged followers can convert into purchases, website clicks, and desired actions. This is called ROI and it’s what marketing is all about.

Trouble is, maybe you bought fake followers on Fiverr and now all your followers are in some country you’ve never even heard of. Or maybe you spent money on ads, grew a decent follower base, and had an ineffective person creating boring posts, then Facebook tweaked their algorithm and your fans stopped seeing your posts completely. Now you’re angry and upset and think that Facebook is a piece of garbage…it’s not. You need to clean house and start fresh.

Let’s dive into this quick guide to shows you how to get more likes AND engagment on Facebook!

1) Clean House

You need to make sure you have a quality community before you move onto everything else. If you own a boutique maternity shop, your clients should be in your geographical area, should be moms…a few dads with a sprinkling of people who could be their friends and relatives. If most of your followers are males in Pakistan, you’ve got an issue.

* Go to Facebook Insights
* Scroll down a bit and look for “Total People Who Viewed” – Select “By Country”. This will give you an idea of where your engagement is coming from. If it does not match your demographics
* Click “Settings”
* Find “Country Restrictions”, Click “edit” and enter the names of the countries you want to restrict.
* Then click on “People and other Pages” (you won’t like this). Manually go through each user to see if they fit your demographic. If not, click the dropdown arrow and “ban from page”

I know that you won’t like this, but the wrong demographic can seriously mess with your efforts. This will be time well spent.

2) Provide valuable content

Just because it is effortless to share almost anything and everything on Facebook doesn’t mean that you actually should share almost anything and everything on Facebook!

The overwhelming majority of online marketers today are “me too” parrot style marketers, copying everything that they come across and pushing it out into the online ether as though it was their own – completely unaware of (or are ignorant of) the fact that they are market has likely already seen the same thing from a handful of other people and has become desensitized to it.

That is the fastest way to make sure that your brand and your business gets ignored.

How do you find good content? See what’s trending and then come up with your own commentary. One great tool is BuzzSumo. Also check out what is trending on Facebook, Twitter, and what others in your industry are creating on Instagram (which is super easy to do with the Photos tool on Socialdraft).

Make sure to test all kinds of content. This means images AND video. Video is currently performing best, so take advantage of that nifty smart phone you got to create some quick and fun vids.

When you utilize valuable content – almost always original content – you won’t have to worry about how to get more likes on Facebook, you’ll have to start worrying about how to maximize and convert each and every one of the likes that you’re able to cash in!

3) Invite People to Like Your Page

There’s a nifty little trick not many people know about. Go to one of your popular posts. Click on the area that shows the people who have liked this post. A modal box will pop up. You will see an “invite” button to the right of this. If you click it, the user will receive an invite to like this page.

Use this in tandem with a boosted post…a quick way to increase your targeted likes.

4) Improve the visibility of your Facebook platform

Even the best marketing on the planet is going to be worthless if you aren’t able to get that marketing out in front of people that can become customers.

You’re going to want to utilize advertising (Facebook advertising is amazing – when you use it right) to improve your visibility, and really unlock all of the leverage that tips to get more Facebook likes has to offer.

With more visibility you’ll be able to convert more visitors into fans, and with more visibility you’ll be able to more effortlessly communicate with your market and create the kind of relationship that they expect these days.

5) Pose Questions

One very effective way to interact with your fans and increase engagement is to ask questions. Asking questions initiates a response from people. Also take time to formulate questions designed to ignite interest, such as tips, controversial issues or questions related to events.

6) Contests

One tried and true way of increasing engagement is to hold contests. There are many types of contests but the key to increasing the level of engagement is to make the contest as intriguing and thought-provoking as possible.

7) Call To Action

In marketing, a call to action is an instruction to the audience to respond by requesting the audience to do something. This could be as simple as leaving a comment, purchasing a product, provide personal details and contact information. The choice is up to you, but let them know exactly what you want from them. Remember, if you don’t ask, you won’t received.

8) Plan Facebook campaigns

Plan Facebook campaigns in advance which will add to your content reservoir. But be creative. For example, Lay’s invited users to propose and vote on the next flavor by selecting three ingredients, a name, and also by providing a short description.

9) Post regularly but not too much

According to some research, pages that posted one or two times per day received forty percent higher user engagement compared to pages that had more than 3 posts per day. Just a reminder that you can schedule your social media posts with Socialdraft (think about it – a whole year’s posts scheduled so you can engage all day).

10) Include Photos

There is a reason photos are the primary type of content posted and shared on Facebook. Photos are also the most engaging type of content on Facebook, with a 87% interaction rate. According research published on eMarketer, photos accounted for 75% of content posted by Facebook pages worldwide.

If you have been thinking about taking advantage of social media to grow your business, the odds are very good that you’ve looked seriously into using Facebook to help make that happen.

Facebook is the Titan of the social media space, and one of the most frequently visited websites on the planet. Combine that with the wealth of information than the Facebook platform has been able to gather about pretty much anyone and everyone, and you are talking about an advertising and marketing super tool you simply cannot ignore.

Without increased Facebook engagement rates on your pages, profiles, or Facebook content, you won’t enjoy all of the significant benefits that this advertising solution brings to the table. That’s where we come in with this quick guide. By taking advantage of the following 7 tips you will dramatically increase engagement on Facebook.

7 Tips On How to Boost Facebook Engagement in 2016

1) Create Engaging Content

It is going to be absolutely impossible for you to create better engagement on Facebook without first creating content that is actually worth engaging with. A lot of people try and throw everything they can at Facebook to see what sticks. Instead, you need to create content that the Facebook community – and your market specifically – is going to be interested in sharing with the rest of the world. Interesting, exciting, and consumable content is the name of the game. Use tools like Buzz Sumo to see what your audience is talking about, play with Buzzfeed type titles, and throw in a few memes to lighten things up.

2) Include Calls to Action

You have to motivate individuals to take the necessary action you want. Think of ways to rally your audience and make them part of something. You could ask you fans to comment on your product in 20 words or less and reward the writer of the best 20 word slogan with a gift. You get the idea. The Facebook Call-to-Action button also allows you to focus attention on a video placed on your website or blog from your Facebook cover image.

3) Showcase Your Brand’s Appeal

Abandon corporate speak and transition to the kind of writing and content that really showcases what your brand is all about. Show off your specific personality, engage with your market on a personal level, and leverage everything that Facebook offers to increase your engagement rate. If possible, allow your fans to go behind the scenes of your company with a (video) peek at something they haven’t seen.

4) Quickly Respond to Comments

With every year, more and more customers are choosing social media to reach out to brands because of the perceived immediacy social media brings. More people are also posting comments about brands on their own feeds. In one survey, 53% of Twitter users expect to hear back from brands within an hour of tweeting, and 72% when the tweet involves a specific complaint. Customers now expect quick customer service on all social media platforms, and when people receive a fast responses, their connection to your company is deepened, making them more likely to make purchases from you in the future.

5) Use Videos

Videos are very successful on Facebook. If you do featured video and regular short videos you will garner lots of views and engagement. Last year, Facebook’s video traffic reached 4 billion daily views, making it YouTube’s first real rival in online video. You can also add playlists on your Video tab so you can manage people’s video experience.

On Facebook, featured videos are placed above your About section and appear larger on your Videos tab. Featured videos have to be enabled by Facebook for your account. Go to the Video tab and see the button to Add a Featured Video.

6) Educate and Entertain

Do research and create entertaining and educational content related to your brand that will contribute to, and heighten the awareness of your fan base. Most people enjoy reading about little known facts related to a product they may purchase. An objective fact about a product genre will contribute to a product’s credibility. For example, if you’re selling oranges you could include informative information about the wonderful benefits of Vitamin C.

7) Create Content For Your Target Audience

Determine the demographics associated with who is most likely to purchase your product, and then target your content to that audience. This info will provide you with a basic understanding of who your prospects might be. Once you’ve done that you should structure your Facebook pages accordingly. Consider asking your fans what they like and don’t like about your Facebook account and make adjustments.

To appeal to your target audience on Facebook:

1. Log into Facebook

2. Scroll to the bottom and click on the link that says “Advertising”.

3. On the top right hand corner click on the icon that reads “Create Ad”.

4. If you do not see Targeting Options, you might need to fill in step #1 which tells you to Design Your Ad. Just fill it in with jargon and then click next to get to the Targeting Area. Here you are able to set up your Facebook Ad Campaigns and determine how many users you can target.

With posts on Facebook reaching fewer and fewer users, everyone is striving to find ways to expand their reach. Posting photos is one way to drive engagement on Facebook pages. And some marketers believe using multiple images in a Facebook post may increase Reach even further.

However, according to Buffer’s Kevan Lee, when sharing content on Facebook, the best results will come from links.

Link posts that use the built-in Facebook link format receive twice as many clicks compared to links typed into a photo update. And Lee adds that this information is derived from Facebook itself, which conducted studies on the number of clicks for different post types.

Their findings suggest that link format outguns photos, and when sharing content on Facebook, the best results come from links.

So what does a link post look like compared to a photo post? And how can you publish one and not the other?

Link posts take advantage of meta tags from the webpage, including information on the page’s title, description, and photos. When you paste a link into the update box on your Facebook page, Facebook will pull this information in automatically and place it in a link format.

Photo posts require uploading and attaching a photo to your update, along with the custom text you choose to add. You can include a link in the custom text and these are the links that fail to get the better click rate compared to link posts.

Lee points out that when you’re writing a new update, you won’t see an icon to enter a link. The options up top are for Status, Photo/Video, and Offer/Event. To share a link, copy and paste a URL into the composer window, and Facebook will display the link’s meta information—title, description, and photo.

With the link that you share, you can control the text and image by editing the open graph tags on your page. Lee has written here about how this whole process works, and if you want to check your progress before publishing an update, you can plug in your URL into the Facebook Open Graph Debugger tool to get a preview (and check to see what might need fixing).

Lee provides 4 more posting tips he characterizes as establishing the perfect Facebook post.

1. A perfect Facebook post is short, as little 40 characters if at all possible

Posts at this length tend to receive a higher like rate and comment rate—in other words, more engagement. A Buddy Media study of 100 top on Facebook found that 40 characters or fewer receives the most engagement on average (it also happens that these ultra-short posts are the least frequent types of posts on Facebook).

Other studies have confirmed the “shorter is better” maxim. BlitzLocal studied 11,000 Facebook pages and found that engagement increased as posts got shorter. Track Social noticed the same effect in its study: So-called “tiny” posts of zero to 70 characters saw the most likes, comments, and responses.

And keep in mind that you’ll also get to use the link’s title and description text to entice readers to click, comment, and engage. The 40-character intro is more of a teaser, supplemented by the text in the link itself.

2. A perfect Facebook post is sent at non-peak hours

The thought process goes like this: You compete with hundreds of thousands of posts to be seen in the News Feeds of your fans. If you post your updates when few others are posting, your updates stand a better chance of making it through.

We’ve referred to this “Late Night Infomercial Effect” before. And Track Maven found some data to back it up. In their study of 5,800 pages and over 1.5 million posts, Track Maven came up with best practices and advice for brands. Among the tips, post on Saturdays and Sundays and post after regular work hours.

In order to land a spot on a user’s Facebook News Feed, try shifting your scheduling strategy from posting during the most popular times in the workweek to the most effective times. The best window for a workday is 5:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. Eastern Time. For another bump in engagement, try posting on the weekend.

3. A perfect Facebook post is part of a consistent sharing strategy

Mark Schaefer and Tom Webster analyzed data on 8,000 Facebook pages (data courtesy of AgoraPulse) to identify how brands were impacted by the apparent drop in organic reach. They came away with some intriguing stats (more than 70 percent of pages had a 30 percent or more decline in organic reach) and some best practices from the handful of pages that are succeeding.

In particular, they focused on four pages that had found success and the four characteristics that each page had in common:

* They target an audience with a strong passion

* They publish very good content (at least, very good for their target audience)

* They publish very consistently (at least once a day, often more)

* They get a LOT of shares (thanks to the 3 points above), and shares are what offers the highest level of “viral” visibility for a page’s content.

Let’s assume you have an audience that is passionate about your page (which is why they became fans, right?). Let’s also assume that you are publishing good content.

What’s the key third ingredient? Consistency.

The successful pages in this study posted at least once a day, creating an expectation among its fans of consistent, quality content. There are several ways of staying on schedule with your Facebook posts; set up a content calendar or sign up for a free scheduler like Buffer. Then start filling your queue with quality content.

4. A perfect Facebook post includes a newsworthy element (optional)

This last point might not apply to some brands whose content and industry don’t lend itself well to timeliness. Still …

If there’s ever a way to slip in a newsworthy angle to your Facebook post, do so.

Facebook’s latest tweaks to its News Feed algorithm give a slight boost to timely, trending topics.

We’ve heard feedback that there are some instances where a post from a friend or a Page you are connected to is only interesting at a specific moment, for example when you are both watching the same sports game, or talking about the season premiere of a popular TV show.

Facebook is making this update in two ways:

* Factoring in trending topics

* Looking at when people like or comment on a post

The first element is related to Facebook’s “trending” section of the site, which identifies topics and conversations that are popular among users.

The second element factors in the rate at which users are liking or commenting on a post. Facebook currently looks at total number of likes and comments as a factor in whether or not to display a post in the News Feed.

With this latest update, another consideration will be when those likes and comments occur.

How to Manage & Grow Your Social Media Accounts

Socialdraft is your all-in-one tool for Social Media management. Socialdraft allows you to:

Schedule posts to multiple Social media accounts
Monitor your online reputation
Have multiple people create and post content
Pull Reports
Engage
and much more
If you’re curious about how Socialdraft works, take us for a risk-free trial.

Most businesses using Facebook on a regular basis to promote their company know by now that posts on Facebook continue to reach fewer and fewer users. With Facebook’s organic reach rapidly in decline, some experts claim it will eventually plunge to virtually nothing.

This realization has driven marketers to devise experimentally creative ways to reach more users. Most savvy marketers know that photos drive engagement on Facebook pages. According to Social Bakers, 87% of a Facebook page’s interactions happen on photo posts. No other content type receives more than 4% of interactions. Facebook pages embrace photos as posts, and 75% of page updates are photos.

Okay, So How About a Facebook Post With Multiple Images?

Early this year, Jon Loomer, one of our favorite marketing consultants, claimed it was possible that using multiple images in a Facebook post may increase Reach.

Loomer explained he had received information from various vendors that if you create a post with multiple images, you will reach far more users than with a typical image share — not a photo album, but a standard text share with added images.

In the example Loomer provides, this is done within the “Status” area of the publisher by typing your message and then clicking the camera icon to add multiple images from your desktop.

The key, says Loomer, is for the images to look presentable when uploaded together. “If you post two or three images, all will be presented side-by-side within the News Feed, on your Timeline and within the permalink.”

Loomer cites several people who provided him with successful illustrations. One was from Patrick Cuttica of SocialKaty.

Patrick provided the examples below:

* Home decor brand page with 5k-10k fans saw 262% increase over average Reach of five prior single image posts

* E-Commerce apparel brand page in 20k-40k fan range saw 280% increase in average organic reach over five prior single page posts

Patrick highlighted a couple of more important points: The decor page saw a 989 % increase in post clicks while the apparel page saw 870%. In each case, this happened even though fewer stories were generated.

Here are a few more success stories people shared with Loomer:

From Michelle Goulevitch:

“If you post 2 images instead of 3 its a better look in the news feed. Not only is reach up on these types of posts, but my engagement is up too (yay!).”

From Dennis Meador:

“Yes I post 3-4 pics at a time and get 2-3 times the reach even with same likes/comments.”

From Jose Mathias:

“Have seen that actually, with a page of 4,200+ likes. Multiple images reach like 3000 while text 2000 and links around 900-1000.”

From Bridget Cleary:

“We’ve found the same, by posting multiple images the reach seems to have improved.”

Considerations

Loomer suggests thinking of this multiple image concept in terms of utility: Do you think that sharing multiple images in this way will provide value? Is it something you think your fans will respond to?

Quick Tip: In Loomer’s own test, he only used square images that were 1200×1200 pixels. Facebook appeared to crop out the outer 5px or so, but kept each image square.

“I plan on experimenting with it. I recommend you do the same. But when you do, make sure you look beyond the metric of Reach. Does it lead to more engagement? More stories? More website traffic? More sales?”

How to Manage & Grow Your Social Media Accounts

Socialdraft is your all-in-one tool for Social Media management. Socialdraft allows you to:

Schedule posts to multiple Social media accounts
Monitor your online reputation
Have multiple people create and post content
Pull Reports
Engage
and much more
If you’re curious about how Socialdraft works, take us for a risk-free trial.

In order for business owners to successfully market their goods and services on the Internet, they need to understand the social media landscape, along with all the associated esoteric terms. For example, there are dozens of Facebook metrics, but even the most popularly used metrics are largely misunderstood because they don’t mean what people think they do.

As Jon Loomer, a digital marketing consultant points out, Facebook marketers regularly confuses Facebook Insights terms, so Loomer has provided a thorough breakdown of every important Insights term — both popular and obscure — that you need to know.

Reach and Impressions

Total Reach: The number of unique users who were served at least one impression of your content via News Feed, Ticker, Timeline or an ad.

Organic Reach: The number of unique users who were served at least one impression of your content via News Feed, Ticker or Timeline without advertising.

Paid Reach: The number of unique users who were served at least one impression of your content via News Feed, Ticker or Timeline with an ad.

Total Impressions: The number of times your content was shown on News Feed, Ticker, Timeline or an ad. One unique user can be shown multiple impressions.

Organic Impressions: The number of times your content was shown on News Feed, Ticker or Timeline without advertising.

Paid Impressions: The number of times your content was shown on News Feed, Ticker or Timeline with an ad.

Logged-in Page Views: The number of times your page was visited by a logged-in user.

Logged-in Tab Views: The number of times a tab was visited by a logged-in user.

Frequency Distribution: A breakdown of the number of unique users served an impression of your content by frequency (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6-10, 11-20 or 21+ times).

Engagement

Engaged Users: The number of unique users who clicked anywhere on your content, whether it resulted in a story or not.

Engagement Rate: The percentage of unique users who liked, commented on, shared or clicked on your post after having been served an impression.

Consumers: The number of unique users who initiated clicks on your content that did not result in stories.

Consumptions: The number of clicks on your content that did not result in stories. Types of Consumptions: Link Clicks, Photo Views, Video Plays and Other Clicks.

Post Clicks: The number of clicks on your content, whether it resulted in a story or not.

Talking About This: The number of unique users who generated a story about your content.

Stories: The number of times users interacted with your content in ways that were displayed to friends and followers. Examples: Page like; check-in, page mention, Event RSVP; Offer claim; post like, comment or share.

Negative Feedback: Actions users can take to tell Facebook that they do not want to see your content. Examples: Hide post, hide all posts, report as spam, unlike page.

Positive Feedback: Actions users take that generate stories and spread your message to their friends. Examples: Question-answer; Offer claim; post comment, like or share; Event RSVP.

Fan Data

The following terms are found in the Page Level Export…

Count of Fans Online: The number of your fans online per hour, by day, to see any content from any source.

Daily Like Sources: The exact location a user chose to like your page.

Total Likes: The number of likes accumulated by your page through a particular day.

Daily Likes: The number of likes accumulated on a particular day.

Daily Unlikes: The number of fans who unlikes your page on a particular day.

The following terms are found in the “Key Metrics” tab of the Post Level Export…

Fan Impressions: The number of times your content was shown to fans in News Feed, Ticker, Timeline or an ad. One unique fan can be shown multiple impressions.

Fan Paid Impressions: The number of times your content was shown to fans on News Feed, Ticker or Timeline with an ad.

Fan Reach: The number of unique fans who were served at least one impression of your content via News Feed, Ticker, Timeline or an ad.

Fan Paid Reach: The number of unique fans who were served at least one impression of your content via News Feed, Ticker or Timeline with an ad.

Engaged Fans: The number of unique fans who clicked anywhere on your content, whether it resulted in a story or not.

How to Manage & Grow Your Social Media Accounts

Socialdraft is your all-in-one tool for Social Media management. Socialdraft allows you to:

Schedule posts to multiple Social media accounts
Monitor your online reputation
Have multiple people create and post content
Pull Reports
Engage
and much more
If you’re curious about how Socialdraft works, take us for a risk-free trial.

For businesses that advertise on Facebook, it’s important to be able to determine the number of paid versus organic activities on your page in order to accurately measure organic growth. And since organic growth reveals successful tactics for building your audience, it can also be used to calculate your Facebook advertising budget.

According to Facebook, if someone views an ad for your Page and likes your Page several hours later, it’ll be counted as a paid like because it occurs within one day of viewing your ad. If someone clicks your ad and likes your Page several days later, it’ll be counted as a paid like because it occurs within 28 days of clicking your ad.

Some marketers urge brands to create new ad campaigns in order not to get overcharged for ads by Facebook.

Calculating Paid and Organic Likes

Paid and Organic Likes are broken down within Facebook Insight’s Like Sources which can be viewed within the Insights Tool, or the Insights data export, where the number of unique people that liked your page is listed by location.

There are three components of Paid Likes found within Like Sources: ads, mobile ads, and sponsored stories. The sum of these three components represent the total number of Paid Likes for your page. Organic Likes, page Likes that cannot be attributed to Facebook advertising, are calculated by subtracting Paid Likes from Total Likes.

Simply Measured’s Nate Smitha points out that the challenge of measuring paid ads and forecasting performance isn’t limited to Facebook Likes. Paid advertising also affects Engagement, Reach and Impressions.

To analyze Organic Likes further, try using SocialDraft.

Free Lunch is Over

Christopher Penn notes: “Facebook has made it abundantly clear that the free lunch of unpaid social media marketing using their service has come to an end; this ‘strategy pivot’ is punishing brand Pages repeatedly until they pay to reach their audiences.”

4 Tips to Maintain Low Cost Engagement

Penn has provided 4 tips to help maintain engagement and mitigate the cost of Facebook ads.

First, stop chasing Likes. Every 2 Likes you get is essentially a penny more you have to pay per post. Let people Like your page if they truly do like your brand, but stop asking them for Likes, and certainly stop paying Facebook for more Likes unless you’re prepared to pay again to advertise to that audience…every Facebook Like will cost you $1.82 in Promoted Post payments (at one sponsored post a day) to ensure that your new Like can consistently see what you’re publishing.

Second, you don’t have to necessarily pay to promote every single post. If you can’t afford to sponsor a post a day, consider sponsoring one every couple of days, paying only for the posts that are likely to generate the down-funnel activities you are trying to achieve. For example, you may not want to pay to promote a daily blog post, but you might want to invest in a post promoting an eBook or app download.

Third, supplement your Facebook marketing with other forms of digital marketing. Put a roundup of your blog posts in your weekly email newsletter. Share your best stuff on other social networks to ensure that it gets seen. Hop on new networks as you have time and resources to do so; newer networks are focused on audience building rather than immediate monetization.

Fourth, make some room in your marketing budget for Facebook if it’s still important to you. The bottom line is that the free ride is over on Facebook. If you want to play, you have to pay, so allocate budget accordingly. If you use our calculator, you’ll see what Facebook expects you to pay per day for the rest of this year.

The surest sign that social media has achieved maturity is that the free ride has come to an end. Expect more social networks to follow Facebook’s path. If you’ve been overly reliant on Facebook for your business, it’s urgent that you diversify as quickly as possible to other networks and other digital marketing tools that will help you save money – like Socialdraft.

How to Manage & Grow Your Social Media Accounts

Socialdraft is your all-in-one tool for Social Media management. Socialdraft allows you to:

Schedule posts to multiple Social media accounts
Monitor your online reputation
Have multiple people create and post content
Pull Reports
Engage
and much more
If you’re curious about how Socialdraft works, take us for a risk-free trial.