Community engagement on Facebook

Any interaction on Facebook by a brand is a two-way conversation. If you are not talking to your audience, you are doing it wrong. You must show the audience that you’re listening to them, and on the same token, you must respond to them. 

When you are on Facebook, you are filling a vacuum. You’re joining an active community of people who are looking to interact with people and resolve their issues. 

A Facebook community is an excellent way to stay relevant and offer your services to people who are willing to buy from you. 

Creating an engaged community demands immense hard work, but in the end, it is worth it. Even if you start today, you’ll be able to learn how to create a strong bond with the customer. 

The present-era interaction relies more on Facebook groups and Pages rather than traditional communication practices. The good news is that people can remember content even after seeing it for just 0.25 seconds. However, you need to be prompt in grabbing their attention.

Speaking of engagement, Fitbit is doing especially well; Fitbit is a fitness pal that helps you keep track of your physical activity data and metrics, with a high focus on community engagement on Facebook. The message on their Facebook page is short and sweet to capture attention quickly, and hence is a great source to entice users who stop scrolling and engage.

Source

The organic reach on Facebook is declining because of the recent changes in its algorithm. At this time, building an engaged community is not just necessary; it is the only means of survival for a business. 

In this post, you’ll learn about how to grow and maintain an engaged Facebook community so that you don’t have to worry about organic traffic any more. 

The social media marketing experts have concluded that a Facebook community can make or break the reputation of a brand. Here are some tips that can help you engage more people on Facebook.  

Spark a Conversation

You created a Facebook group or Page, and you have new members or fans every day. Before you know, there are hundreds of people to manage. 

The issue arises when no one is speaking in the group, and the only one that is posting is you. That’s the worst nightmare of a community builder. 

As a group owner, it is your responsibility to ignite the conversation in the group. Here are some tips that you can use to crack the conversation and keep it going: 

• Post a question: In a Facebook group, you must educate people about your product/service. When you post a question, it will provide you an opportunity to interact with the customer. If your service revolves around nutrition. You can ask the user about their favorite smoothies. 
• Ask for their Opinion: Whatever blog post you share in the email, post the link in the group, and ask people for their opinion. When people leave a comment, it will be easy for you to strike a conversation. 
• Use Custom Hashtags: When you use custom hashtags for your posts, people will be able to relate your content with the hashtag. This will help you organize your content and make it easy for people to join the conversation. You can always check this post about how marketers should use hashtags on Facebook.
• Facebook Live your brand culture: By Facebook Live we mean, a live video streaming feature on Facebook that enables you to broadcast a live video to your audience through your company’s profile page. People want to become a part of a tribe, so when you share your company culture with your customers, they will try to become part of it and discuss it openly in the group. No denying it, Facebook Live is an excellent way to interact with viewers in real-time.

Go live with the group

• Facebook Live gets 10 times more comments than regular videos.
• Facebook paid celebrities $50 million to use Facebook Live. 
• “Facebook Livestream” phrase has an increase of 330% more searches in between 2016 to 201 alone. 

As you might have realized that Facebook Live is not a new addition to the business world. But it is a fun and interactive way to engage with your audience. Brands like Benefit Cosmetics is a fantastic example of how businesses can use Facebook Live to engage people in a group. 

Instead of random live videos, the company prefers to create a series of themed videos each week in which they interact with the audience and ask them what they want to see in the next video. This gives members a chance to take part in the creation of the videos.

Facebook Live events

• A report by CBS revealed that 7.5 billion people had watched the New England Patriots and Los Angeles Rams since 2018.
• In Q1 of 2018, Twitter live-streamed 1,300 events. 

Your community on Facebook might be virtual, but that doesn’t mean that you cannot hold live events. Conducting question and answer sessions will provide value to the viewers, and the expert opinion panel will attract new people in the group. 

Viewers can engage with your brand with questions in the live event, and experts can answer them in real-time. Check how Grazia UK conducted a live event where people interacted with a group of experts to weigh down their problems.

Use Prompts to Encourage Users to Participate 

It’s tricky to encourage people to engage and interact in a group. That brings us to another fantastic tip. Use prompts to encourage users to share user-generated content in the group. One of the most useful prompts I came across was “Blog Post Thursday” by Freelance to Freedom Project community on a Facebook group.

Image courtesy: Freelance to Freedom Group

Utilize Facebook Community Building Features

When in 2017, Facebook launched new features in Facebook Community, it was eminent that Facebook was serious about allowing marketers to engage and interact more with the people. 

The following three features can be used to get the attention of users, both old and new: 

• Welcome Posts: Who doesn’t love a little bit of welcome. These posts can be pinned on the home page where new members are welcomed and sent instructions; incentives for taking part in the group.
• Badges: Badges give members an identity. When new members and even most active members receive a badge, it puts them in a particular category. 

Member Profiles: With member’s profiles, it is easy to differentiate between a new member and an old member of the group.

Create Engaging content 

The better you understand trends, themes, and people’s behaviors, the better content you’ll be able to create for your audience. 

To create content that can engage people on social media, it is vital that you understand the medium that you are posting it on. For instance, a video might perform well on Facebook instead of Twitter. An infographic might engage more users on Pinterest rather than Facebook.

Your community should always come first. If you have the insights regarding your audience, you’ll be able to create a bond with the audience before you pitch your grand product to them. 

The Facebook algorithm increases the brand reputation if people remain on the platform rather than driving them to another page. The higher the chances that you have been seen by the audience, the higher the chance to create engagement.  

Take Part in the Conversation 

A Facebook community is more than just putting content out there. As a brand, you need to join the conversation as well. The critical thing to mention here is that you need to create a reputation for your brand. 

Whenever you see people having trouble with something, don’t wait for permission, if you can, jump-in and solve their problem as fast as you can. Of course, when people mention your brand, either good or bad, respond with patience and with an open mind. 

Consumers use social media to bond, communicate, discover, and act. If you think that you can help them in any of the stages, it is worth stepping in and joining the conversation.

When you talk to people on social media, it is not just them and you, it is about everyone else who is paying attention to the conversation. Whether you have an angry customer or a happy one, you need to deal with both customers in a manner that adds value to the reputation of your brand. 

Here are some valuable tips to take an active part in the group: 

• Try to use popular or trending hashtags to learn what people are talking about and how you can help them with their concerns. 
• You don’t necessarily need to push your content. Just offer genuine advice and link them to third-party content if it helps them. 
• While doing so, in a subtle manner, you can engage with the audience and establish your reputation as an authority in your niche.  

Share Inspiring Stories 

• 79% of the readers will scan the content instead of reading the whole post. 
• Messages delivered in the form of the story are 22X more memorable than facts.

You can use the Facebook group to share stories from your brand. Giving out regular updates keep the users engaged. This will help people to memorize more from your brand. 

Every single day is a good day to post something new and inspiring. 

Take some inspiration from MouthFoods, who regularly share engaging stories on their page. Other than mouth-watering products, they create amazing stories around their products that attract the genuine attention of the users.

Look at how the company involved their product in an interesting story. Emotional appeal is likely to get more engagement.

Another example is from Warby Parker, where they unforgettably shared their company vision.

Get the Influencers on-board

Generating ROI from an influencer is the topmost priority for brands, even in 2019. Research by MediaKix revealed that 89% of the brands said that influencer marketing generated more ROI than any other channel.

Connecting with influencers will help you increase your band reach. Take a look at the best practices of influencer marketing. It takes a lot of time and patience to build a powerful bond with influencers and picking the right one can take a lot of time. To develop a relationship, you must follow Gary V’s advice on “Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook,” which frequently translates to give, give, give something before you ask for something. 

Promote their content, give them feedback, and support the community that they love. When you engage with an influencer with genuine intentions, they’ll know that you are adding some value to them. Once they believe you, it will be easy for them to trust you.  

To Wrap it all up

If you want to grab the attention of users, you must use strategies to engage them. When people feel comfortable talking with you, it will be easy to learn about their core problems and solve them with your brand service and products. 

Managing a Facebook community is not easy. Whether there are angry or happy customers, it gives you a chance to show them who you are. When you solve the problems of people on social media, your brand gets undivided attention. 

When people engage with your brand, it opens up a golden opportunity to understand their buying intentions, which gives you an edge over your competitors. The more conversations you have with the potential audience, the more chance you will get to create an impact on someone who doesn’t know you at all.