Not every post will make your audience engaged.  You should not just post anything and assume your followers will interact with you. Perhaps your Facebook page has many followers and likes but your fans do not get involved. One reason maybe you do not post attractive posts that may lure them to like, share or comment; another reason is you post too much or too little. One of the best ways to engage your followers is by publishing great posts and enticing them to engage.

People will certainly love to add their comments to your post, but can’t do this if there is nothing to discuss concerning your posts. To grow your Facebook page consider the following types of Facebook posts.

 

1.      Caption this Photo

Pictures are easier to consume and comprehend than text. They are flawless, brief and easy to digest contrary to texts. People tend to grasp images more quickly than texts. This is because our brains can process images quicker than texts.

When you compare status updates and images, images get more likes. That is why Facebook concentrates more on developing design and layout to promote the visual aspect of the site. In relation, you will note that images with or without texts are the major posts on Facebook. And with the right image, you will earn a good amount of likes and shares.

A new trend on Facebook is the way a series of images are used to tell stories or illustrate information, and as a result, it sparks more user engagement. By getting people to comment on any photo uploaded, you increase the length of your reach and ultimately your brand engagement. 

Types of images

Photos can be of various types. They could be tailored to suit a specific message or just for fun. Below are some of the images that can be used to increase engagement.

• Inspirational images: They are usually emotional in a way, that makes you want to share with your friends and family. Here is a link to a good selection of inspirational images.
• Office and business images: This works well when your business is in a visual niche; event planning, interior designing, fashion designing or real estate. You can post photos of happy clients, staff pictures or previous and ongoing work/projects. Make sure to avoid business stock pictures. They are overused and will kill engagement.
• Comic or cartoons: They make your audience laugh. They use humor.
• Memes: Memes use humor to earn likes and shares. They are mostly created out of a trending topic or hashtag. You can use funny captions or inside jokes but relevant to your business. 
• Funny images: They make your audience laugh. Always relate the funny images to your niche. Do not overdo it, stick to the relevancy of your business. You can find trending funny images, memes and cartoons at Memebase.
• Infographics: they are a representation of data or information in a simple manner. They are informative with interesting illustration. They illustrate your factual ideas into eye-catching visuals. We use Canva to create really nice looking infographics.

 When posting images, consider the following:

• Post photos that are of high-quality/HD to capture the eyes of your audience. Some photos are of low quality and may turn off your audience and make your page look amateurish.
• Capture photos that interest your users and are within your niche if you manage a Facebook page.
• If you own a website, do not hesitate to include links below your images; so each post can drive traffic back to your website.
• Include relevant texts in your images to assist in telling a story.
• You can post funny posts and ask your audience to ‘caption it’. People will leave funny comments if the image interests them.
• Taking pictures of people enjoying your product and simply posting the best in a timely manner. If you run an ecommerce site for example, there are several ways of getting high quality pictures of your products. The first one is to ship a unit to a professional photographer or use a service like Product Photo who will create professional looking photographs for you. Another is to just hire a graphic designer or use a service that optimizes your own pictures and makes them look more professionals. For this last option we recommend checking out SnapShop.

 

2.      Videos

Videos uploaded to Facebook lead to more engagement than YouTube videos. This is because Facebook’s algorithm prioritizes showing content hosted on Facebook to your audience, rather than content hosted on 3rd party sites. Therefore uploading your videos to Facebook (even if you post them to Youtube) and only then sharing them, is a little-known hack to make sure your video reaches more people. Facebook videos capture the attention of its users, they are short and the message portrayed is simple and brief.

Here’s a tutorial on how to upload your own video on Facebook:

Whichever type of video you post let it be:

• Creative
• Relevant
• Within your niche
• Short
• Simple

The introduction of autoplay feature facilitates videos to automatically start when users scroll down their timeline. Facebook users will have a sneak peek of what the video is all about and perhaps the user will watch it. Autoplay videos tend to receive the highest number of likes and shares. This feature has been proven to generate traffic to your website and Facebook page and thus increase your engagement rates.

There are a lot of Marketers currently doing live streams on Facebook. Streaming Live really encourages immediate comments and reactions from your audience and can lead them to an immediate purchase. You can also post the video of the live stream to your Facebook page once the live stream ends so that people who get there late can still watch it and get more sales that way. If live streaming is something you may consider I suggest studying a Marketer like Tai Lopez, who generally does weekly live streams with prizes and usually gets hundreds of thousands of people engaged with his live streams.

You can check out Tai Lopez’ Facebook page and strategy in this link and check out one of his live videos that was watched by almost 200k people below.

NOTE: I’m not promoting or endorsing any of Tai Lopez products. Like any of these so-called Internet marketing Gurus, my belief is that the best information and insights are had from studying and back-analyzing how they market their products and grow their audiences rather than actually buying and studying the information on their products. My motto is “Do what the Gurus do, not what they tell you to do”

 

3.      Questions

Questions form a discussion with your fans. It is a way of interacting with your fans, getting to know them and letting them know you. Asking questions grabs their attention. Ask questions on trending topics or intriguing questions related to your niche. Asking questions is a way of getting more comments.

You can ask a question at the end of your post or just a single line of thought. Let the questions be simple and straight to the point. You can also ask questions frequently asked by your followers, email or forum; this way you are not helping your audience but also yourself. It is a way of driving user engagement.

When your followers comment, please respond to let them feel that their opinion matters. Comments are in form of advice, tips or personal opinion. Some followers may post rude remarks; you can leave them or delete the comment, report it to Facebook.

You can try posting different types of question to see which ones work best for your page.

There are diverse types of questions you can ask. Some of our suggestions:

• True or false questions; it has only two answers (true or false).
• Yes or no questions; it has only two answers (yes or no).
• Tips; it requires an explanatory answer. Example: How would you advise your friends to use this product?
• Timely questions; a question that requires a response on the same day or event/ instantly: Today is Father’s Day, how are you celebrating it?

 

4.      Quizzes

This is a fun way to interact with your followers. Your followers are tested on the depth of their knowledge. People who are not familiar with your company, products/services will get to know about it when the post is shared.

Choose a specific day or time to post a trivia and another time to post the answer. Do not post it at the same time this is because you want your audience to anticipate and have the anxiety of when the answer or the next trivia will be posted. Your followers will keep on checking your page regularly. This way it guarantees an increase in user engagement on your page.

To make your Quiz fun as possible consider the following:

• Link the trivia to your fans’ interests.
• Integrate your brand or product
• The entry period should be short to promote urgency
• Include visual content- image or meme
• Award more than one winner

While you can create your own quizzes, luckily there are nowadays a few apps that allow you to create quizzes automatically and post them to your Facebook Account. We suggest checking out Quizzes for Pages. It’s a really inexpensive product that can save you some time in producing high quality quizzes consistently.

 

 5.      Quotes

Who doesn’t love quotes? We all have that favorite quote by a famous, an expert or popular person especially a motivational one. Quotes have the power to motivate and educate. People love to read to read them. Quotes get a lot of likes and shares when people see that they can relate to.

You can outsource it or create one yourself. Remember to give credit to the original owner when you outsource. It can be presented in a simple text or visual content as a way to increase engagement on your page. Find a schedule to post your quotes, quotes that can relate to your followers and relevance to your page.

Our suggestion is to use Photoshop or Canva. It’s really a 2-minute job as can be seen by the video below:

6.      Contests

The benefit of holding a contest is to increase your discovery to a wider audience. The trick here is to get your followers to perform some action in return for an entry to the contest. And usually what you ask in return is for them to share your Facebook Page, Website page, etc.

When your users share your Page with their friends, other Facebook users will know that your page or website exists and products and services you offer. Those users will, in turn, see your page and enter the contest themselves, sharing your page as well, and thus creating a viral effect.

Contests are held to reward loyal fans. Winners are picked either according to the number of likes, shares, comments or all.

You can host as many challenges as you want, depending on your ability to provide worthwhile rewards and the extent of engagement you want.

We have used Gleam.io before to host these type of contests with good results.

 

7.      Text

Keep your status updates short and brief. Ideally, if all you’re posting is text, pretend that you’re on Twitter and write no more than a short sentence or two. People tend to quickly consume short texts but ignore longer texts. Share valuable information that will interest your audience; your thoughts, facts, insights or updates. Texts form better posts when combined with visuals. People may forget the text but definitely remember the image. 

 

8.      Tips and Tutorials

Posting tips and tutorials is one way to to provide extreme value to your audience. Tips are usually brief and simple but should be powerful enough to create a “Aha” moment in your users’ minds.

Tutorials tend to be a more thorough explanation of how you used method or tool X to achieve desired outcome Y. If desired outcome Y is something that your audience needs, wants or at least can resonate with, you’re very likely to receive extremely good feedback from this kind of post.

Mix and match tip, tutorials, images and videos to make your posts look attractive and professional. You can also add your logo to the image. This is a good tactic because when the image is shared your brand and your URL goes with it. 

 

9.  Fill-in-the-blanks

This type of posts attracts people to participate in creating a story or just filling the blanks. You create a sentence and let people finish it or make it have a missing word. Do not leave it too open-ended; not all people have positive remarks. People participate by giving short answers. People get to interact by commenting or liking each other’s response.

A celebrity/author/marketer that I’ve seen using this strategy thoroughly on their Facebook page is Jordan Belfort, the Wolf of Wall Street. Make sure to checkout his Facebook page and see how he uses this strategy to keep his users engaged.

 

10.  Testimonials

Testimonials are the ultimate proof that your business can solve people’s problems. You can use testimonials to show the growth of your business or the satisfaction of your clients. You can take a screenshot of an email or post and share it with your Facebook fans. Besides, you can include a testimonial area on your Facebook page for clients to review your product and services right there.

There are many tools that enable Marketers to install this feature in their Facebook pages. You can try the Boast tool. Testimonials can be retrieved from online reviews, your email or just a simple comment in one of your posts. Testimonials can be in form of texts or videos.

 

11.  Blog posts

If you have a blog on your Business website you must integrate your blog posts with your social media strategy. If not, you should start a blog, as it’s a great way to drive targeted traffic from the search engines into your business. Your Facebook page should cover the key parts of your business while your blog covers more detailed information. Your Facebook page will then drive traffic to your website and vice versa.

You can also post other people’s articles relevant to your Facebook page that you will find beneficial to your audience. Just be careful not to promote your competitors!

 

How to Find Proven Content to Post on Your Page/Profile

Although creating original content should usually be your aim, it also tends to be a very expensive and time-consuming trying to guess which content will perform best with your audience.

That’s why you should really consider using the following strategy:

1- Use a tool like Buzzsumo to find out top performing content for your Market

2- Re-write those articles, change the images for similar ones and you’ll get yourself a brand new article that is VERY LIKELY to be like and shared, maybe even go viral.

We will write a post on how to use Buzzsumo at a later date, but you can check it out how it works in the video below:

 

While Buzzsumo is really great and worth every penny, if you’re broke and can’t afford it right now, I suggest just going to Reddit, looking for the subreddits related to your market and see what posts generated the most buzz there in the last 12 months. These are also very likely to perform with your audience.

 

Conclusion

Before posting anything, ensure that your structured post meets several prerequisites. Ask yourself some of the questions before clicking that “post” icon.

Outlined above are just a few types of Facebook posts that you can use to interact with your audience. You can try the different types and choose which works well with your brand. Create a good content that interest your fans to enable you engaging them on a personal level.

It may not be easy to create creative content but with the help of these tips, you are on the right track. Do not focus on one type of posts always interchange and combine to reach your targeted audience and keep them engrossed. Each type of post works differently.