Connor BrookeWe’ve all heard the saying, “Ask and you shall receive”. In the case of social media, this mentality can put you miles ahead of your competition. Statistics show that when you blatantly ask your fans to ‘like’, share or comment on your post, you can wind up with 216% more interaction than if you hadn’t! This is an amazing trend, because more engagement means more visibility, and we all want to get the word out about our product or service at the end of the day. But be warned- you should still pay attention to how you’re asking for these things. After all, manners are manners, and the same lessons you learned about being courteous as a child can still work to your advantage, even on Facebook! Let’s explore some different calls to action and how they work.
Use the ‘like’ button as a sign of agreement
People scroll through their news feeds quickly, and some don’t take the time to pause and manually answer a question. Asking your fans to simply ‘like’ a post if they agree with something is an easy way to encourage them to engage with you. Here’s an example from restaurant client, La Dolce Vita.
If this post had merely talked about the characteristics of Pinot Grigio, it may still have gotten a like or two from fans of the wine, but by simply asking for likes as a sign of agreement, LDV got much more mileage out of their piece of content.
Here’s another example of successful ‘liking’ in agreement from beauty client, Billion Dollar Brows:
Yet another easy win, because people are merely asked to perform one click in accordance with a question they can answer in less than a second. Remember to keep the subject matter around your brand or industry, and subtly promote your products using your best judgement, like BDB did in the comment thread following their post.
Play simple guessing games
People love a good guessing game- it’s easy to participate, it’s fun, and it will encourage people to come back to your page or post in order to find out the answer to whatever question you posed. Take this example from our Facebook page when we turned one of our less heavily branded weekly features into a game of who’s who:
Although this post doesn’t have anything to do with our product or service, it’s a once a week reminder that we like to have a little fun, and people certainly respond to it. Mixing in this type of content can be great for raising the level of engagement on your page, and anyone who knows anything about Facebook visibility will tell you that one post with lots of interaction gives your next post a better chance at being seen.
Add a sense of urgency
It certainly helps to provide your customers with a great deal on your product or service, but how you market it can help to determine how successful your promotion will be. In the case for social media, simply asking your fans to participate can prompt a direct response in the form of better engagement! Take a nod from client Kukees cookies, who used a sense of urgency to get people to like & share their promotional post:
The copy is enticing (we’re hungry now), the visual is attention-grabbing, and there’s a link to the promotion readily accessible for social consumers. We’d say this is a highly likeable and shareable piece of content!
Ask People to Contribute
People like to lend a helping hand on subject matters that they’re savvy in, and more & more data shows that consumers really enjoy being a part of companies’ branding decisions. This is certainly the case in client Service Dogs America’s Facebook community, where service dog owners and just plain dog lovers make for lively conversation on one of their favorite subject matters: their canine companions. People are definitely more apt to give you their feedback if you just plain ask for it, which is exemplified plainly by the following post:
This is a win-win situation, because Service Dogs America is not only using their audience to thoroughly answer a user-submitted question, they’re also majorly upping their engagement factor. By allowing page fans to take the wheel and feel a sense of power, this piece of content is a definitely deserving of applause!
So there you have it- four different ways to ask for better Facebook engagement. We hope the response you receive from applying these tactics is bountiful to say the least! For more information on this and other subjects, be sure to stay tuned to our blog and download our free 95 page E-Book.
Cheers!
This article was written for Business 2 Community by Connor Brooke.
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