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5 Ways To Improve Your Facebook Page Engagement with Fans

Written by - 27 Comments
Categories: Facebook, Facebook Marketing, Social Media, Social Media Marketing

Engagement is commonly perceived as being a valuable goal when implementing a Facebook marketing strategy.

Yet the word “engage” is tossed around like confetti at a mad monks wedding during social media discussions with the assumption that everyone is on the same page.

This scant disregard to what it actually means quite often ends up with clients and the marketers having totally different ideas on what goals will be achieved and tactics implemented.

The challenge for marketers is that with over 30 billion pieces of content being shared on Facebook a month, how do you improve and optimize your engagement with your Facebook fans and visitors so that you can deepen the engagement over time.

So What is Engagement?

Engagement is any interaction with a visitor to your Facebook site and can be a very simple ‘weak tie’ engagement such as a ‘like’ through to a full blown online conversation that results in emails with the ultimate engagement is face to face and beyond…but we won’t go there!

Examples of engagement

  • Visitor ‘liking’ the page
  • Leaving a comment
  • Posting a link
  • Uploading an image
  • ‘Liking’ a link

When Should you Post?

Some other questions that  I have been asked regularly are “When should I post?” and “How often should I post?”

A recent study from Buddy Media which covered a sample size of more than 200 clients analyzed “Likes” and comments made to these posts were also analyzed which provides some answers to those questions.

The sample size represented the world’s largest brands in a wide range of industries including entertainment, media, retail, automotive, business and finance, fashion, food and beverage, healthcare and beauty and travel and hospitality industries.

They looked at three primary success metrics in relation to Wall Posts:

3 Primary Success Metrics for Wall Posts

So what are some primary success metrics you should be measuring?

  1. Comment Rate – number of comments as a percentage of fan base
  2. ‘Like’ Rate – number of ‘likes’ as a percentage of fan base engagement rate
  3. Engagement Rate – a combination of the above factoring in fan base size

If you aren’t already these 3 key metrics should start to be built in to your reports.

Key Takeaways from the Research

1. Post Timing (Hour)

Brands that posted outside of normal business hours had 20% higher engagement rates on their posts.

The best time to post on Facebook

2. “Promotional” Keywords

Which keywords are most engaging when running a contest, sweepstakes or other offer? The results are rather enlightening

Some of the key words that were most engaging were: Event, Winner, Offer, Win, Brand New and Entry. So these are the words you should consider when writing your Facebook ‘copy’

Facebook Keywords producing the most engagement

3. Post Length

Posts between one and 80 characters had, on average, a 27% higher engagement rate than posts with over 80 characters, yet accounted for only 19% of all posts. This finding shows that you need to take a closer look at the post length when uploading content to your Facebook page. It needs to be kept in mind we live in an age of the “Attention Economy” and skimming.

4. URL Shorteners

Engagement rates are 300% higher for posts that used a full-length URL, as opposed to a URL shortener. For me this maybe suggests that the transparency of what the link actually is makes it easier for people a to trust and then click on the link.

5. Keywords

The study showed that keeping it simple was key.

Top 5 Key words that generated the most ‘Likes’

  1. Like
  2. Take
  3. Submit
  4. Watch
  5. Post

Top 5 Keywords that generated the most comments

  1. Post
  2. Comment
  3. Tell Us
  4. Check
  5. Like

So from the time of your post to the keywords you use when designing and  updating your Facebook page they can all make a difference to the optimizing of your marketing results. A 20% improvement here with a 10% increase to another element can make a big difference to a marketing campaign result over time.

I look  forward to hearing your stories about Facebook engagement on your site.

If you want to read the full report you can download it here.

More Reading

Image by Martin Neuhof | martin-neuhof.com


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  • Anonymous

    Nice quick and easy read, it’s a head slapper that asking for people to like you and check you out would get you more likes. 

  • http://johnyoungblog.com John Young

    TThis is excellent content. Thankyou.

  • http://jeremysarber.com Jeremy Sarber

    What about link sharing with thumbnail versus a traditional text status?

  • http://twitter.com/skypulsemedia Howie at Sky Pulse Media

    First off 30bil items shared is only 1.7 per person per day. When people now have hundreds of friends and have fanned 100+ pages chances of you getting your piece shared is negative zero. Second the feed is polluted. 97%+ of all posts to the feed are never ever seen. Engagement by fans on pages with lots of passion like Audi will have 0.1% engagement rates at most. Starbucks and McDonalds are lucky to have 0.01%. And if I have to use words like Win then does that mean your Brand isn’t valuable enough for me to visit without that? And if I have to manually go to your page via the search box why not your website.

    And since in the US only 22mil of the 67mil who logged in today are going to be active in any way (numbers proven by Compete showing unique monthly visitors and number of total visits in the month of April) and the fact that usage per person is down over 30% for time spent per day since April 2010 (from Facebook’s own stats page) why not stick to traditional marketing. Your store sign will impact your business in one week way more than Facebook could over the course of a year.

    Your post to me confirms the utter failure Facebook Fan pages have been for marketing. One of the biggest strike outs in the history of marketing. Why? No one cares about your brand. Every brand has a page. Walk around your house. The clothes you wear. They all have pages. How many will you talk with today? Because they all want to talk with you today.

    Its a bad platform and we want to talk with our friends and family. We don’t want to discuss your product here. That is what the store is for.

    • Damienserrel

      I def agree even though I use it for my brand it most def is not all the hype they make it out to be.

  • http://twitter.com/ladybead Rose Elliot

    Great read and great advice as always!

  • http://twitter.com/MarciMarketing Marci Gower

    Excellent content I can use. Thanks Jeff.

  • http://twitter.com/JanetBoyer Janet Boyer

    Interesting info.! Thanks Jeff. :o )

  • Anonymous

    Great stuff here Jeff! Thanks

  • http://www.facebook.com/garry.morrison Garry Morrison

    Great information Jeff. Am sharing this article . You have presented it with clarity and simplicity.

  • http://www.facebook.com/stevemurphey Steve Murphey

    A new study by get satisfaction says that 37% of users only follow brands to get deals. It’s definitely great to get fans engaged, but can be very tricky. Thanks for the great post!

  • Abey Malouf

    Bang on Jeff! It’s easy to forget that posts need a clear call to action for people to respond in kind. 

  • Abey Malouf

    Bang on Jeff! It’s easy to forget that posts need a clear call to action for people to respond in kind. 

  • http://www.pokergosh.com The PokerGosh

    The thing about the full-length URL is very important..
    I didn’t knew it..
    Thank you..

  • http://www.pokergosh.com The PokerGosh

    The thing about the full-length URL is very important..
    I didn’t knew it..
    Thank you..

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  • http://www.contentequalsmoney.com Emma Richardson

    You’re so right about the link shorteners. How many among us have clicked a shortened link that was sold as something legit, only to find we’re now at the mercy of a trojan horse virus? The legitimate, upfront link is best.

    Do you think that any of these suggestions are open to alteration, now that Facebook has reconfigured its news feed settings again?

  • http://www.phillipandrewdodd.com Phillip Dodd

    Jeff, I’ve noticed that when I mouse-over any graphics on your blog, a “Click Here to Share” comes up. Do you mind me asking how I can get this feature on my blog? I use WordPress, privately hosted.

    • http://jeffbullas.com Jeff Bullas

      Hi Philip The feature you want is is activated when you install the Wibiya Bar that appears at the bottom of my blog http://www.wibiya.com/?ref=L

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  • http://www.providentpartners.net/blog Albert_Maruggi

    buddy media is solid 

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  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003058708801 Wahaj Afzal

    plz like this page http://www.facebook.com/pages/mrcoolworld4ublogspotcom/190014367738839

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  • http://twitter.com/Kristina589 Kristina Andersen

    Very useful metrics! Thanks for sharing Jeff!