It’s pretty easy to create a Facebook ad, in fact you can have one up and running in less than a minute. But as marketers and businesses owners, our goal is to create Facebook posts that receive engagement, not to create them in the shortest possible time.
Greater engagement of posts increases your Page’s organic reach, relevance score and lowers the cost of advertising. Music to my ears.
In today’s article, I’ll review 4 Facebook posts (paid and organic) that used simple tricks to increase engagement.
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Positive messages are great for engagement
Social media users are more likely to engage and interact with uplifting stories than messages full of pain or fear. Nobody wants to feel down or insert that feeling upon their friends (engaging with Facebook posts aggregates on friends’ newsfeeds) and is why good news stories spread like wildfire on social media.
See Place uploaded an organic Facebook post earlier in the week sharing a wonderful story about how a man saved a baby deer’s life:
Makes you feel joyous just looking at the cute deer doesn’t it?
See Place did everything right with the image in their post. The picture shows a man smiling and an extremely cute deer giving him a kiss, it screams out happiness, nature and joy. Facebook users are going to like that update without thinking twice as they scroll through their newsfeed.
The picture has such an impact that they didn’t even need to come up with a descriptive headline, although the words they used further portrayed the positive message.
What you can learn from this: Use positive messages when you want to increase user engagement or get your content shared. If you promote articles on your Facebook Page, add a positive spin. Use appropriate images to that make people feel happy and empowered, then measure the engagement against regular posts.
This works best with blog content and news stories over products or offers.
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Going back to basics
We live in an online world where we obsessively focus on colors, wording and even URL length to eek out an extra percentage in clicks and impressions. Sometimes going back to basics and providing value is all you need to achieve to increase engagement.
Digital Marketer went back to basics with their organic Facebook posting using plain backgrounds and text:
What they’ve done is incredible simple but very clever at the same time. Using a black background their posts stick out like a sore thumb in any Facebook newsfeed, the font is plan, big, simple and it probably took less than a few minutes to design.
You really don’t have to get fancy to get your posts seen as Digital Marketer kindly pointed out with this Facebook post:
What you can learn from this: There’s no need to reinvent the wheel or spend hundreds of dollars on fancy images. If Digital Marketer is doing something, it’s because it works. This type of update is great when you want to draw attention to a sale, receive user generated content or emphasize a point that interlinks to content you’re linking back to.
Note: Facebook posts that contain more than 20% of text in the image cannot be promoted. While these types of Facebook posts are effective, you’ll only be able to serve them organically.
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Providing Instant gratification is important for lesser known brands
One of my biggest annoyances on the Internet is being enticed to click a link without knowing where I’ll be redirected. When ads are served to me from a business I hardly know, unless I know where I’ll be redirected, I usually won’t click.
Am I being sent to a landing page, product page, blog post, video or some other type of content? Online users want instant gratification, especially mobile users who may be redirected from the Facebook app to a mobile browser.
The digital nomad site A Farang Abroad quantifies all his Facebook updates with brackets stating the content prospects will be sent to. In the example below, the Facebook post provides instant gratification on where prospects will go by clicking the post, and what type of content they’ll be redirected to:
All doubt has been removed from prospects’ minds on where they will be directed and the value they will receive. Do they want to read a blog post on how to setup an exporting business in Asia? It’s a simple yes or no question with all doubt removed.
What you can learn from this: Whether you’re promoting a product, infographic, video or eBook, consider using brackets at the start of your headline aware your audience of what to expect. For example, you could use any of the following:
- [Video]
- [New product]
- [Infographic]
- [Downloadable report]
- [White paper]
- [Free eBook]
Brackets are hardly used in Facebook updates but are a great way to catch your audience’s attention, Drop Shipping Lifestyle do the same with their retargeting ads:
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Keep Your Offers Simple
When promoting any type of offer on Facebook, the secret to converting is to make the value proposition simple and clear, even if that means mentioning it twice in your ad like Jasper’s Market offer:
There’s no confusion here. Prospects must spend $50 to receive $10 off their first order.
Short and sweet.
I’ll often see ads that go into great depth about the offer using way too much text forcing users to click the ‘read more’ button to view the whole offer.
What you can learn from this: The next time you decide to promote an offer on Facebook, keep it simple and don’t overcomplicate things. A high quality image and a simple value proposition that’s easy to understand usually works best. Jasper’s Market got over 5,500 people claiming their offer afterall.
Summary
There’s truly a 101 ways you can create your next Facebook post to make it great, above are just 4 examples of how being a little bit different can give you that extra edge.
If you’re having trouble getting the results you want with your Facebook posts or feel your organic reach is dropping, try using any of the four examples mentioned to kick-start your Facebook engagement.
Nick Bridges
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