Improving Your Facebook Page for a More Engaged Community
Numbers rarely paint the whole picture and the same goes for Facebook groups; it is not important how many members you have but rather how active and engaged they are with your business. Obviously, an engaged community is easier to connect to for market research, new product brainstorming, promotional campaigns and discounts. So here are some ways for how to improve your Facebook group with this aim.
The first step to engaging an audience is to gather it, or in other words, to get the right people into the group. This tactic must target niche-specific demographic audiences for the best effect. For example, a software company could try to engage software developers and their clients. To this aim, spread a message and a link across niche sites, blogs, and forums promoting the group. Alternatively, pitch the idea to key influential individuals in your industry and make them the promotional figures of the campaign. Another option is to add a “Send” button1 to the page for better sharing.
Having gathered your high quality audience, you must offer them interesting and useful content to keep them interested. Big websites usually have in-house or freelance writers to produce content for their blogs, which can be shared on the social network. However, unless there is a valid reason for not sharing your competitor’s content (for example, focusing on increasing your sales), you could pick up news from around the globe and add short commentaries. Additionally, showcasing how certain problems can be solved using your services could increase your conversion ratio as well as the community engagement because you are, in effect, giving people exclusive knowledge.
Maintaining a company YouTube channel and incorporating it into your Facebook page is sure to improve the user experience and increase engagement. Much like the written content, the videos must be informative, well-delivered and useful, combining product showcasing with lecture-style explanation. The channel can be incorporated both with company pages and with personal profiles so that users don’t need to manually post every single item.
Engagement should be a two-way communication, and the Facebook page administrator should encourage participation by replying to comments by other users and urging them to post what they consider interesting and useful. Furthermore, there should be regular polls and moderated discussions so that knowledgeable specialists can express their opinions and defend them. In this spirit, there could be debate competitions with rewards and special badges. Fervent commenters should be rewarded for their participation with limited edition items or special services.
Some Facebook users don’t have a habit of checking for updates every five minutes, but their expertise and knowledge make it worthwhile to chase them on other platforms. To this end, enable users to track updates via other social media like Twitter, and even include a mailing list with customizable options so that they receive only relevant notifications. For some industries, it may be appropriate to add a contact form for more details so that you can properly address the recipient.
Every community loves to be rewarded for engaging with an organization, so you should periodically show special offers to your entire Facebook community. Alternatively, if you have the budget, you can give free gifts to your users in exchange for sharing, liking or commenting on some of your posts. For a better effect, limit the offer to long-time members or influential commenters. Fan cards with the business logo2, which can be sent to friends, are another way to popularize your brand and satisfy your users.
Engaging your Facebook community involves taking its needs and preferences into consideration. If you need help doing this, we can offer you the expertise you are looking for.
References:
- https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/send/
