Jimmy Rodela
How do you get thousands of Facebook users to like, share, or comment on your posts? That is the million-dollar question that businesses and marketers who venture into Facebook marketing are drying to find out.
For most businesses, the frustration lies on how they are aware of how their target audience are hanging-out on Facebook, yet, as they publish their posts in the hopes of connecting with them, no one’s really engaging.
No comments, no shares, no likes – nada!
It’s really frustrating, isn’t it? Even after paying hundreds (maybe even thousands) of dollars just for you to set up a professional looking business page, and queuing up TONS of content with high quality images for your content calendar, you’re still not getting the level of engagement that you were hoping for.
If you’re still struggling with getting people to engage on your Facebook posts right now, then allow me to share with you these killer Facebook strategies that can help change all that.
1) Add a sense of mystery in your headlines.
Warning: This strategy works disturbingly well when it comes to getting your audience to click on your links.
If you’re an avid Facebook user, which I imagine you to be, you’ve probably already seen posts from upworthy.com and viralnova.com. More than just seeing their posts on your newsfeed, you probably also clicked a couple of them too, didn’t you?
I don’t blame you. With the way they’re crafting their headlines, it’s just impossible for their posts to get zero clicks.
If in case you haven’t figured out what’s making their posts “tick”, it’s the element of mystery that they’re adding on their headlines.
The formula is, the more mysterious your headline reads, the higher the chance your audience will click your post.
A critical mistake that most marketers make when using this strategy is they make their headlines either too broad, or, too specific. Be sure not to make these mistakes.
2) Ask about your audience’s product preferences
The idea is to add an image of both products that you want your customers to choose from. Of course, the products that you need to compare should be relevant to your business; though you don’t necessarily have to add your product as one of the options.
A good example is asking your customers whether they want a beer or a wine. Or, if you’re in the freelancing niche, you can ask your audience to choose from Odesk (now Upwork) or Elance.
Because of the mechanics of this strategy, it is especially effective when it comes to garnering more comments.
What inspired me to try this strategy (again) was a post on Ecwid.com by Jesse Ness. Although he talked about a couple other helpful strategies on his post (which you should definitely check out), this one strategy about asking your audience’s’ product preferences, especially stuck in my mind.
After having used this strategy for one of my client’s business pages, I managed to gather twice as much comments as I usually did.
3) Use questions that stimulate nostalgia
This strategy is perfect for growing likes and comments.
For this strategy to work, you need to make sure that the main subject that your question revolves on gives your audience the beautiful feeling of reminiscing their past.
A good example is posting an image of a warm-looking old lady that’s smiling. You can then add the question, “What’s the most memorable experience you’ve had with your grandmother?”
There are a couple of reasons why this strategy works: it makes the viewers emotional, therefore, making it easier for you to elicit a reaction from them, everyone likes sharing the good ‘ol days, and lastly, it has a clear call-to-action (more on this later).
While this strategy can still work without you making your audience feel nostalgic; the difference is quite massive. After running several tests, we have found that we’ve been getting 19% more engagement on posts where we add a sense of nostalgia on them.
I first read about this strategy on one of Amy Portertfield’s posts.
4) Leave a clear call-to-action
What is a call-to-action, you might ask? Here’s how businessdictionary.com defines it.
“Words that urge the reader, listener, or viewer of a sales promotion message to take an immediate action, such as “Write Now,” “Call Now,” or (on Internet) “Click Here.” A retail advertisement or commercial without a call-to-action is considered incomplete and ineffective.”
Ever heard of the adage, “you don’t receive, because you don’t ask?”, well, there’s certainly some truth to that. That is why you need to leave a clear CTA on your posts so you can give your audience a clear direction on what to do after consuming your content.
A good example is posting an image of a cassette tape and a pen (this should remind them about how people use pens back then to rewind cassette tapes). You can then ask the question, “If you know what to do with these, then comment below”.
If you leave that kind of message/instruction on your post, there’s a good chance that your readers will in fact comment on your post.
Conclusion
Getting people to engage on your Facebook posts doesn’t have to be rocket science. All you need to do is re-engineer the tips that I shared above, and you should see better engagement from your audience.
If you’re also looking for ways to grow your social media followers, you can check-out my post about the 5 Incredibly Simple Yet Effective Tips to Grow Your Social Media Followers.
Photo courtesty – © peshkova / Dollar Photo Club
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