How to Improve Facebook Engagement in 2018

In early 2018, Facebook began favoring brands and posts that create “meaningful interaction” between users.

This means that overall, Facebook users will see more content from their friends, family, and groups, and less from businesses, media, and brands.

Businesses won’t know the full impact of the changes for a long time. But Mark Zuckerberg himself specified that public content will be held to a new standard if it wants to stand out within Facebook’s new algorithm: 

“It should encourage meaningful interactions between people.”

Until now, great social media and digital marketing relied on compelling storytelling to stand out.

Going forward, stories may not be enough to catch attention for your brand.

In this article, we’ll give you ideas for creating interactions that set your brand apart and increase engagement on your Facebook page.

What Is a Meaningful Interaction on Facebook?

A “meaningful” interaction is authentic, personal, and positive.

We’re a society that values family, friends, food, and health. These are the things that bring us together and naturally create meaning in our daily lives.

How Do You Create Content That Sparks Facebook Engagement?

To start creating meaningful interactions on Facebook, brainstorm content topics that spark genuine emotions from your audience.

What creates positive memories?

• Laughter
• Romance
• Experiences
• Sports
• Games
• Group activities
• Good-natured pranks

Narrow these topics by considering some related activities:

• Pursuing a bucket list
• Increasing knowledge
• Spending more time with family
• Enjoying sports games
• Sharing music with friends or community
• Competitive or group exercise

Choose a topic or two that you can tie back to your brand, and develop your ideas and campaigns around it.

For example, food bloggers create meaningful interactions with followers by offering a glimpse into their everyday life.

A survey of consumers' advertising preferences also shows that food and drink advertisements are appealing because they touch a basic human need – hunger.

Can you tie food into your business's Facebook promotion?

Images like the one above show the story behind the story – what goes into curating a food blogger's Facebook page? It also appeals to an everyday activity – preparing and eating food. 

What Are Other Ways to Get My Facebook Page Seen?

Try 4 tactics to grow your followers on Facebook: advertising, hosting events, staying in-platform, and keeping content positive.

Use Facebook Ads

You can run Facebook ads for as little as $1 a day.

Use the Facebook Ad Aanager to narrow your target audience, and then monitor your insights and tweak ad copy and visuals to improve your ads over time. 

Learn how to drive results with Facebook ads.

Entice Offline Fans to Join You Online

Try holding events, popups, or parties to grow your fanbase offline.

Encourage fans to share photos with their friends on Facebook or invite them to fill out a Facebook Poll on your business page.

Experience marketing, when combined with photo opportunities and hashtags, can be a fun and rewarding way to build a social media audience that’s eager to engage with you.

Take Advantage of Facebook's In-Platform Tools

Use Facebook Live, discussion groups, and Facebook videos to help your brand get seen more often.

The goal of Facebook is to keep users on Facebook.

“Facebook generally tends to frown upon and lower the average visibility and ability of content to reach its audience on Facebook if it includes an external link." – Rand Fishkin, co-founder of Moz and SEO expert

Using Facebook's native app, instead of sending fans to your website, may make your Facebook page more visible.

Keep Content and Messaging Positive

Share high-quality content that’s upbeat and makes your followers feel good. 

Politics, news, and religion have grown more negative over time, and social media and the news have been blamed for using that type of negativity to divide people instead of bringing them together.

This phenomenon is at least partly behind Zuckerberg’s changing Facebook's ranking algorithm.

Facebook's New Algorithm Opens Doors

Now that you’ve got some ideas on how to create meaningful interactions and tips to increase your Facebook engagement, you’re ready to get started.

Get creative and have fun building what will hopefully be a more positive and enjoyable social media experience for everyone involved.

Next time you see a headline telling you that the new Facebook algorithm is going to destroy digital marketing, take a deep breath. Change can be scary, but it’s often for the best.