How to Increase Your Facebook Page Engagement

Feeling discouraged about your Facebook page lately? If you’re looking for tips and tricks to increase engagement on Facebook, this post is for you!

I recently received this question from a follower:

“I’ve been feeling discouraged about my blog lately — in particular, my Facebook engagement. My reach is only a tenth or so of my total followers and on any given post, I only get 10-20 likes. So my question is how do I improve on Facebook? I think I have a dedicated audience in some ways, but at the same time I don’t think these numbers are very good or helpful.”

First of all, let me start by saying that if you are experiencing this on your Facebook page, you are not alone!

Just about everyone I know has experienced a dramatic decrease in Facebook reach over the past couple of years. It is very common! The Facebook algorithm is constantly changing, and seeing a reach of only a tenth of your total followers is pretty normal.

That being said, I do believe there are some practical tips and tricks you can try to boost your Facebook engagement a little bit!

Here’s what I suggest trying…

1. Ask questions.

This is something I’ve really been experimenting with and people love to be asked to give their input.

As you’re posting on Facebook and writing teaser text for Facebook posts, make sure you’re engaging your audience and that it’s a two-way conversation!

When people know that you want to engage with them in a two-way conversation, they’ll be much more likely to stick around and be active in your community.

Hint: If you’re bold enough, you could even experiment with being a little bit opinionated and ask your readers for their opinions! For example, talk about a book you really didn’t like or a recipe you tried that you thought was a bust. I don’t recommend crossing over into really divisive areas such as politics, but it can be fun to get a little opinionated! It gets people excited to jump into the discussion!

When you ask your question, just make sure it’s not too big of a question. Keep it short and sweet. And if there are choices, keep it to just two options.

Some examples:

• “I have all these extra avocados about to go bad. How should I use them?”
• “Which of these two outfits should I wear today?”
• “Which of these books should I read next?”

Keep it simple! People are much more likely to engage if it’s simple. If you ask a big open-ended question, it can sometimes overwhelm your audience and you won’t get as much response.

2. Post at peak times.

What time are your followers on Facebook the most often? Post at those times!

You can actually go into your stats on Facebook and see when your followers are most active on your page. Use this to your advantage!

I’ve found that most of my followers check Facebook later at night between 8 and 10 p.m. CT. So we try to schedule our best posts during those times when we know people will be online.

3. Vary your posts.

This is a super important tip and one that I see a lot of people failing at.

Change up your posts!

Facebook rewards you for being engaging with your audience in different ways — and that includes using different kinds of posts.

Here are some post types that have worked really well for us:

Photo Posts: These go crazy for us! We just post a single photo with text and no links. I often repost my Instagram photos to Facebook like this, and they have some of the highest engagement of all our posts!

Link Posts: Although link posts don’t get as many views, they seem to really give your post a lot of good juice and traffic to sort of “prime” it for when you post it again. We’ll often post our Evergreen content first as a link post and then again as a multiple photos post (see below). When you use a link post, make sure it has a really nice preview photo to catch people’s attention.

Multiple Photos Posts: This is one of our most successful types of posts, because these posts get a lot of views!

Video Posts: I’ve talked a lot in the past about the importance of live video, but I can’t stress it enough! Video posts get SO much more interaction than regular posts. (Also, if you’re a food blogger, we’ve found that recipe videos do REALLY well.)

4. Look for multiple angles on your posts.

Different types of people interact with different preferred types of posts, so when you post content several different times in various ways, that increases your chances of followers seeing your content!

You can often post something to Facebook more than once in several different ways.

As an example, I recently posted this Grocery Budget post to Facebook three different times! Here’s what I did:

• I posted it first as a link post.
• Then a few days later, I posted it as a multiple photos post with different teaser text.
• Finally, I posted it in a completely different way focusing on the lasagna casserole I made that week.

In addition to just posting in various formats, you can often approach the content of a post in multiple ways, too! I probably could have even done a video about this post, if I wanted to.

See how much you can squeeze out of one post and be creative in how you promote it. You’ll be surprised how much this helps to increase engagement on Facebook!

5. Pin posts to the top of your page.

When you pin a Facebook post to the top of your page, it typically dramatically increases the reach for the first 24-36 hours!

If you’re really trying to increase engagement on a particular post, definitely experiment with this. We’ve found it to be really, really successful — especially on video posts!

After about 36 hours, it starts losing steam. For this reason, I recommend keeping your pinned content fresh and updated by replacing it with a new post every few days.

6. Pay attention to what does well.

Instead of focusing on what’s not working on Facebook, focus on what IS working!

Keep track of your trends — what’s doing well, what posts have the highest engagement, what times of days work best for your audience, etc.

We actually have a spreadsheet to keep track of our top Evergreen content that performs well on Facebook. We know which types of posts do best during certain seasons, too.

This really helps us know which posts our audience loves, and which posts we should come back to and repost if they’re still relevant.

Also, pay attention to what types of posts do best for you! Sometimes if something is falling flat for us on Facebook, I’ll just delete it and repost it in a different way to get better engagement on it.

Whatever is working, focus on that.

7. Engage your audience in the comments.

It’s important to remember that your platform is a community. And your followers will love it when you respond to them personally.

I highly recommend that you go in and interact with at least some of your Facebook comments every single day. If possible, interact with all of them.

If you have a smaller Facebook page and you’re just starting out, you’ll probably be able to respond to all of the comments.

We have a really established Facebook page with a big community, so it’s not possible for me to respond to all our Facebook comments. And my big focus is Instagram, since I’m the only one who manages my Instagram account. (I try to respond to almost every comment on Instagram each day.)

That being said, even though there’s someone on our team who responds to all the Facebook comments every day, I do still try to go in twice per day and check the comments and respond to things that jump out at me. I try to engage as often as I can on Facebook.

Not sure how to find the time to respond? Try to find pockets of time throughout your day when you could multi-task!

I typically do almost all of my community engagement while I’m walking on the treadmill in the morning. And then I’ll also respond to comments when I have wait time — in the carpool line, at doctor’s appointments, etc.

Find those times in your day and plan it in your schedule to make sure you prioritize interacting and engaging!

8. Share other people’s content.

Facebook really rewards you when you share other people’s content!

And other people’s posts already have some momentum, so when you share them on your page, that momentum continues and increases your overall page engagement.

{Tip: Just make sure that whatever you’re sharing is still serving your audience well!}

This also helps builds relationships with other people who have Facebook pages!

9. Collaborate with other bloggers.

It can’t hurt to ask other blogging friends to share things for you!

Maybe even start a share group where you all commit to share each other’s content each week.

For example, right now we’re partnering with someone who has a lot of Pinterest engagement but we have a lot of Facebook engagement, so we are swapping.

There are all kinds of ways to get creative with this!

10. Know that some months will be down.

The Facebook algorithm changes constantly. Know that it’s normal for your reach numbers to be down some months.

That’s just the normal ebb and flow of business. It goes in seasons.

Do the best you can do. Keep focusing on what’s working. And keep challenging yourself to experiment a little bit!

I’d love to hear from you! What’s worked for you to help increase engagement on Facebook?