While many brands trying to make their mark on this platform believe that it’s all about chasing followers, the real success lies in high Facebook engagement.
According to Facebook, connection is evolving, and so are we. While the Facebook web platform and eventual app are now regarded as one of the primary pioneers of social media, the corporation has now collected a wide variety of companies under its banner such as Instagram, WhatsApp, and Oculus.
Despite the fact that new social media platforms are popping up left, right and centre, Facebook is still often regarded as the godfather of this digital landscape. For individuals and businesses alike, conquering this platform has long been about getting as many friends or followers as possible. However, for those looking to use Facebook for social media marketing, Facebook engagement is really what counts – but what’s the difference, and how do you measure it?
Understanding The Metrics Of Facebook Engagement
In an ideal world, using Facebook as a business offers a way to gain exposure, connect with new and existing audiences, conduct market research, build a loyal fan base or following, develop brand authority, and to generate new leads. To connect the dots, one would logically do their best to get as many followers as possible, right? Not quite.
To summarise why Facebook engagement is more important than how many followers you have, it’s as simple as quality over quantity. Mega influencers, or users who have an excess of one million followers, provide the perfect example of this. While they often command the big bucks with influencer partnerships, their engagement levels are actually also proven to be much lower thanks to a broader audience.
In marketing metrics, engagement is all about measuring the people who interact with your content instead of just scrolling past it. Specifically for Facebook engagement, the focus is on generating as many reactions, shares and comments as possible. In fact, it’s for this very reason that a number of brands are instead choosing to partner with micro influencers to secure higher engagement rates – or to connect with people that will actually pay attention.
With the ever changing social media algorithms, getting seen by the right audiences organically is getting harder than ever. Considering that the average Facebook engagement rate is just 2%, the platform algorithm is designed for users with only a small selection of posts by friends and pages they’ve liked in their newsfeed – even Facebook says the average number of fans who see your posts is just 16%.
Before you get disheartened, it’s worth noting that industry experts believe that a successful Facebook engagement rate should sit anywhere between 1% to 5%. In fact, some of the world’s biggest brands operate in this bandwidth, with Air New Zealand – and its legendary campaigns – even coming in at just 2.35%.
If you’re a band or business looking to master the Facebook engagement rate formula and crunch the numbers on how well your content is doing, the good news is that the process is actually quite easy. Simply divide the total engagement rate (likes, shares, comments, etc) with your page’s total followers, and multiply that number by 100. As an example, if a company with 10, 000 fans received 100 shares, 100 comments and 200 likes on a post, their engagement rate would be 4%.
Ultimately, there’s nothing quite like good content to boost your Facebook engagement rate. Audiences need to be able to relate to your brand, find something of value or interest in the message you’re communicating, and are proud to be associated with you. If executing a carefully crafted content strategy isn’t your thing, it might be time to consider outsourcing.
The Key To Good Marketing Is Great Content
Producing quality, consistent and on brand content takes time, effort, experience and resources, but avoiding these responsibilities altogether may actually be doing your brand a disservice. Thankfully, investing in a solid content marketing strategy has actually never been easier.
Here at Content Hive, producing top quality digital content is exactly what we do best. We have itemised a list of digital content services, and allocated credits next to each of these. This means that each month, you can use your credits with us to produce digital content such as blog articles, social media posts, videos and even animated Instagram stories. By using this model, we believe that it enables us to produce high quality content with faster delivery times.
If you aren’t quite sure where to start on your digital marketing journey and would like to speak to a professional, why not book in a free discovery call with us at Content Hive today to discuss how we can get your brand buzzing online.
