How to Create Engaging Posts to Keep Your Business Top of Mind

Facebook Business

November 16, 2018

According to a Facebook-commissioned Factworks study, two-thirds of people surveyed say they visit a local business Page on Facebook at least once a week, making your Facebook Page a powerful platform for you to connect with customers, promote products and offerings, and drive business results. “Local shopping study” by Factworks (Facebook-commissioned research study of 10,340 people (8,78 monthly Facebook users, 1,562 non-Facebook users), ages 18+, US DE, FR, UK, IT, ES, PL and CA), Apr-May 2017 But in order to use your Facebook Page most effectively, it's important to make sure your content is compelling and post frequently—we recommend posting two to three times per week. We know it can be challenging to know what to post, so we put together a list of tips to help you use your business' Page most productively.

1. Include a call to action

Start by determining the business goal you're trying to achieve such as getting people to attend an event, building awareness of your brand or driving sales. Then, you can tailor your messaging to encourage people to take action laddering up to your business goal. For example, if your goal is to increase reservation bookings over the holidays, you can invite your customers to message or call your business to make a reservation. Or if you're hoping to drive traffic to your store, you can help get customers through your doors by creating a post with a “Get Directions” button to direct people to your nearest location. Creating posts with action buttons allows people to easily start an order, buy tickets, send a message to your Page and more, to help you reach your business goal.

2. Get visual

Since visual content helps capture attention and engage audiences, it's important to include a visual element in your post like a photo or video to connect with your customers. You can produce high-quality photos and videos easily from your mobile device. When capturing photos, try playing with unconventional angles and perspectives to create interesting shots and be sure to create a focal point by putting a subject in the foreground. And remember simplicity is key—the most effective photos are often the simplest, like a close-up of a product or a satisfied customer. With video, it's important to capture attention in the first few seconds and deliver your message quickly—15 seconds may be all you need. And since many people will see your Page content on their mobile device held in a vertical orientation, it's best to shoot your video in portrait (vertical) mode. You can also consider using video editing apps like Legend to animate text, Boomerang to create short looping videos or to experiment with stop-motion videos.

Stories are where your customers engage with visual content every day. In fact, people are now sharing more than one billion stories across Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp Status every day. [Facebook internal data, October 2018] This makes stories a great way to connect with your customers in an authentic, casual way.

3. See what's working in Page Insights

Page Insights can help you understand what content your customers enjoy most. By learning which posts are getting the most reactions, comments and shares, you can tailor your posting strategy to maximize engagement and ensure your posts are relevant and interesting to the people you're trying to reach. And by tracking engagement with your action buttons, you can see which posts are driving results for your business.

Businesses like Terre Bleu, a family-owned lavender farm outside of Toronto, are driving results by posting to their Facebook Page. Terre Bleu regularly posts content tailored to its audience with the goal of generating awareness and farm visits. Using Page Insights, Terre Bleu found that non-promotional content, such as posts featuring recipes or photos of the farm, generate the most views and shares. By tailoring its Page posts given this insight, Terre Bleu saw a 2X increase in visits to the farm and a 3X increase in sales year over year.

Get more tips on how to create effective Page posts.

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