For the last few years, Facebook has garnered a reputation for being a dying platform, with younger audiences joking that parents use it more than their children do. According to SproutSocial, as of December 2021, over one-third (36%) of Facebook’s audience are 45 or older, and only 26.4% of the user base are millennials. Not only that but, according to BuzzSumo, engagement on Facebook pages has fallen by 20% since the start of 2017.
It’s easy to see why advertisers are struggling to connect with Facebook’s audience overall, not just the younger generations.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. Facebook is still an incredibly powerful tool for marketers in 2022 if you know how to utilise it. But where do you even begin? Well, here are our top 5 ways that you can improve your engagement on Facebook to get you started.
1. Pinpoint your target audience
Nowadays, every demographic uses social media differently. That 26% of millennials who use Facebook regularly are most likely not going to have the same interests as the 36% of baby boomers. When it comes to Facebook, it’s important to pinpoint the demographic you want to reach out to and figure out how best to engage with them. It may seem like a simple strategy, but it definitely works.
2. Find the perfect posting time
If you are updating your Facebook business page late at night, or during rush hour, or before most Facebook users have woken up, it’s likely that your target audience is missing your most valuable posts!
Research your target demographic and find their most active time on social media throughout the day. For example: by posting an update at around noon, your audience will likely see it during their lunch break. By planning your social media around your audience’s schedule rather than your own, you are ensuring a higher chance of engagement with the people you want to hear from most.
3. Ask for your audience’s input
As a social media marketer on Facebook, nothing is worse than “me me me”.
Social media should feel like a two-way conversation. If you’re not trying to reach out and engage with your audience, your audience won’t feel the need to engage! Facebook is unique in that it allows for both polls and votes via post reactions (not to mention the comments) so it’s easy to find out what people are thinking.
So next time you’re thinking of putting out some content, consider ending it in a question or a poll. Everyone has that one opinion that they’re just dying to share—why not ask your audience about theirs?
4. Find inventive ways to stop that scrolling thumb
Imagine you are sitting on Facebook during your lunch break. How’s your experience? What exactly are you doing? It’s very possible that you are mindlessly scrolling through your news feed to see what your friends are up to, or to catch up on what’s going on in the world.
With the way that social media is evolving to be more fast-paced and snappy, attention spans are becoming shorter. A lot of social media users often get sucked into a bad habit of mindlessly scrolling through everything they see without really stopping to look.
As a marketer, it’s your job to get that thumb to stop scrolling and have the audience really look at your content.
But how?
Maybe consider one or more of the following:
- Pose a question or two for your viewers to answer. Remember when we talked about asking for your opinions? You can implement that advice here!
- Make sure your brand stands out by using your company’s colour palette to your advantage. Anything to capture your audience’s attention.
- Use eye-catching imagery: generally speaking, the more unique and interesting, the better!
- Use GIFs and/or videos in your content. Something flashy that actually moves on your news feed is bound to catch more attention than a static image.
- You could even use memes to reach out to younger audiences! When done correctly, humour is a great way of getting that scrolling thumb to stop and read what you’re posting.
5. Remember: Quantity over Quality
While it is sometimes good to utilise a steady stream of content for your Facebook viewers in order to keep your page up-to-date, sometimes it’s even more useful to take a step back.
According to Buffer, by cutting the company’s posting frequency by over 50%, their reach more than tripled from 44,000 to 150,000+ people per week, and their average daily engagements on Facebook rose from roughly 500 to more than 1,000.
This is a truly amazing set of results but it begs the question, why is this the case?
Well, when you focus more on the quality of your posts over the quantity, you are prioritising how well your content comes across to your viewers instead of how much content you put out. As Buffer says: “When trying to fill the queue with content for the simple sake of posting and having a presence on Facebook, content tends to become diluted and lost in the news feed.”
When trying to reach out to your Facebook viewers, always remember that less is more and quality is always more important than quantity. That way, your audience gets to see the best of your business and not just content for the sake of content.
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