Engagement Is The New King

We have a new ruler and their name is “Engagement”. Page likes and content are great but without engagement, what value do they really have? You should be driving engagement by getting your content in front of the right people to build a community that doesn't just "like" your page and forget it, but one that grows with valuable members who seek out, appreciate and participate in your content. 

As a whole most people aren’t putting too much weight into the "page likes" metric. Over the years page likes have become a sort of vanity metric that looks good on the surface but doesn't really tell you how users are interacting with that page's content. Some people may have just outright bought page likes, and or have a bunch of page likes from their friends and family or from a giveaway contest, but they've all unfollowed the page so none of the page's content is actually being seen. Facebook is moving away from this metric as well. In 2021 they started removing the "page like" function from brands and celebrity pages and just stuck with the "follow" action. They've also removed the ad objective of "page likes" from the ad manager, so you can't run an ad targeting audiences just for page likes anymore. The only way to invite strangers to "like" or follow your page now is if they've liked a post on your page.

So now it's "followers" over "page likes", but what's the difference? The big difference is that followers will see your content and it means someone is truly interested in the content of that page. "Followers" becomes a more accurate reflection of who sees and interacts with your content. This is all about Facebook's shift in the focus to user engagement for their algorithm. All content that is engaged and interacted with has much more weight and value to it. That helps increase its visibility and organic reach, which in turn raises the content and page's overall value. Growing your followers then becomes that much harder in that you really need to prove your worth to users. You could buy page likes or followers, but you can't buy that user engagement. Getting those post reactions (likes & loves), comments or shares are much harder to come by.

The type of content you share on your Facebook page determines what type of interaction you have with potential followers. If you’re just sharing an article to your page it shows a thumbnail image, headline, and caption. At that point, the user doesn't know if they like, agree or hate the article content until they click and read it, so they are much less likely to like/love or comment on the post at that moment. After clicking to see the full article, they are taken away from FB to your site. Once they read it, they go back to FB and they scroll to the next thing, or maybe the timeline reloads altogether and they've lost where that article was posted from and that chance at engagement is lost. Whereas an FB page that has the content/image/etc directly within the post, a user at that moment can decide if they like/love it and or want to comment, they aren't taken away or lose the post when they come back. They constantly see the name of the brand/page that posted it and can decide if it's the type of content they want to see regularly and can easily click to the FB page and like/follow from there. 

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To drive that content engagement you want to ensure that content gets in front of the right people to get those comments and likes rolling in (That’s where a tool like Arrow can help you easily target the right audiences). The page followers will come but it takes a combo of things to really grow that community with content-engaged users who want to see what you are offering:

1. Posting Frequently and Consistently - If you don't post regularly it's not worthy of their follow

3. High-quality content - You need to show users that what you put out daily is of high quality and adds something of value to their timeline each day.

4. Showing some personality - Quality content or product is great, but showing a different side of yourself engages your community on another level. Breaking up the monotony of your usual posts with content out of the norm shows the user your personality outside of the day-to-day content that you push to them in their timeline. 

This can also be an answer to having content that lives within the post and not something they have to click over to your site to see. It can be a chart or photo, just some different from the usual "story/article" content with all the info right there in the post.

5. User Engagement - Nobody likes talking to themselves. Users want to know they are a part of something and are being heard. Giving users a like or reply to their comments is a small gesture that lets them know you're real and appreciate their interaction.

6. Patience - It takes time and multiple engagements to get someone to see the value of your page and want to click the follow button so they don't miss the next post you do. It will take time to build the community, but the ones that do show up you know will be more engaged and interactive with your content, making them all that much more valuable.