Low engagement on social media pages is a common problem for a number of businesses. The page might be ‘liked’ by quite a few people, but the posts aren’t being shown to many of these people, and the ones that do see them don’t react. The answer lies in the content you’re posting, and whether the people who have opted to ‘like’ your page are actually your target market.
The way Facebook works is that a page post will be shared to a few ‘likers’ to see if anyone thinks its relevant. If the post receives any likes, comments or shares, it will be shared to more ‘likers’, and this will continue until no one else appears to be engaged. Advertising can help with reaching more people, but if your content is still not targeted or engaging, then it can be money wasted.
The next three steps will help to get your page working better organically:
- Work out your overall brand promise to your customers. Pages that are all about your product can get pretty boring very quickly. Think about who currently buys your product and what they aspire to achieve, or the problem they want to solve, from using your products. Chances are that what your target customers want to achieve will be much bigger than what your products alone can achieve. This bigger goal can form the basis of your brand promise.
- Make a content plan and regularly post content relevant to your target market and overall brand promise. If you sell storage solutions, your overall brand promise may be something simple like ‘organising your home’. You can then find and post all sorts of content about ‘organising your home’. Some of these posts will give you the opportunity to promote your product, but many will not. Remember – it’s not about you, it’s about your target market.
- Monitor post engagement regularly, including type / message of post, image engagement, day / time of day posted and which segments of your target market decided to like, comment or share.
It can take many months to build your page engagement organically, but it is possible. Make a plan, post regularly, and modify your plan based on feedback.
First published in Business Life, Vol 1 No 1, February 2016