Facebook Beyond The Post – Strategies For Follower Engagement

Let's go beyond the post and explore some great features Facebook offers to take your social media to the next level. 

Highlight Your Work

As a page administrator take advantage of pinning a post to the top of your page. This is a wonderful feature if you have an announcement, a promotion, or a high-performing post that you want to highlight. Pinning the post will keep that post at the top of your feed and will be the first post visitors and followers see when they view your page.

Here is how to do this. Once your post is published or posted look for the three dots that appear on the upper right-hand corner of the post. It will open a drop-down menu where you can select pin to the top of the page...and Viola you are done!

FSDM Tip: Make sure to freshen up your pinned posts on a regular basis especially if there is time-sensitive information.

GO LIVE

Going LIVE on Facebook has the greatest reach of any post type. It draws as much as 10 times as many comments than a prerecorded video and people watch it ten times as long. Facebook also prioritizes the LIVE videos by putting them at the top of the news feed and sends notifications to your followers that you are LIVE.

Here are some great ideas for using the LIVE feature:

• Giving tutorials
• Broadcasting an event
• Making a big announcement
• Going behind the scenes (BTS)

The longer that you are LIVE, the higher the likelihood that people will tune in. I recommend a minimum of 10 minutes for a LIVE broadcast.

There are great tools you can use such as StreamYard, Onestream, Switcher Studio or Restream to GO LIVE on multiple platforms. 

Plan and Schedule Your Posts

Consistency is key when keeping your audience engaged.  I know firsthand how busy it can get as a business owner, so I recommend planning your posts. One of the best Facebook tools is to create your content and schedule them ahead of time by using the Schedule Post button.

You can even use a third-party scheduler to help streamline this process. There are many out there like Loomly, Later, and my personal favorite Hootsuite. What I like about Hootsuite is that it provides analytics on multiple platforms (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and more) to help with creating a winning post strategy.

Stories

This year marketing has moved to meaning and we are stretched to create meaningful messages that tell a brand story and connect your followers deeply to your brand. A great way to do that is by using... the Story Feature

Some may wonder what are Facebook Stories? They are disappearing-posts that stay live for a total of 24 hours. So the question is why would we want to use stories in our business strategy? 

Facebook Stories are given prime placement on both desktop and mobile and it bypasses the newsfeed algorithm. The algorithm dictates the order of the posts that users see when they are scrolling through your feed. 

Facebook has story ads where businesses can access features like 360-degree photos, and cross-posting on Instagram Stories. If you use this cross-posting feature, here is an Instagram tip. Use the highlights option that will allow you to capture your stories at the top of your Instagram profile and that keeps them there for future viewing.

We want to know… how you are using this content in your social media strategy to put you Full Stride Head! Tag us on Instagram and use #fullstrideahead

Check out our podcast, The Full Stride Minute, where we offer bite-sized social media and other digital marketing tips for the busy business owner.