You have a Facebook business page. You or your social media partner consistently publishes proven content that matches your audience’s interests on it. However, you’re still not getting the amount of engagement that you desire. What’s wrong?

Here are five common Facebook mistakes you might be making.

1. You’re Not Following Best Practices

Here at SOCi, we take special care to follow best practices when posting on social media. For instance, we use our social media management platform’s “peak time” function to ensure our Facebook posts go out when your audience is most likely to be on the page and ready to engage.

We also ensure that the copy accompanying each Facebook post invokes emotion—such as happiness, humor, fear of missing out and exclusivity—asks an open-ended question and/or includes a call to action, whether that call is to react to a post or visit a client’s website.

The SOCi content team uses a variety of post types, including recipes, DIY projects, décor, cleaning and organization, home entertaining, local event information and more. In addition, we vary the post format, using articles with link previews, shortened links that are image forward, videos, polls and memes.

By following these proven practices, we lay the foundation for our posts to garner audience engagement.

However, best practices, and social media trends in general, are always changing, so it’s easy to understand why some users may not be adhering to best practices. If you are unsure of current best practices, be sure to check out our blog periodically, for up-to-date information.

2. You Have No Idea How Many Fans You Have

If you are already incorporating the aforementioned best practices into your social content strategy, but still aren’t seeing the results you would like, the problem may be that you have few Fans (which are accumulated through page Likes). Not having enough Fans means fewer people are on your page, which translates into less engagement.

Moreover, in simple terms, Facebook takes your page’s popularity (i.e., your number of Fans) into consideration in their EdgeRank algorithm, which determines how high on your audience’s timeline your posts will appear. If your audience can’t see your compelling posts, they can’t comment on, react to or share them—no matter how good your content is.

3. You Don’t Post Live Video

Speaking of Facebook’s algorithm, it is important to note that managers of Facebook business pages are already fighting an uphill battle. This is because EdgeRank’s main purpose is to provide users with a pleasant experience that doesn’t include too many promotional posts or posts that feel promotional.

With this in mind, it’s crucial to publish content that is personal to your audience, as a signal to EdgeRank that your content provides a positive user experience. One way that you can do this is to publish live video.

Live video is effective on two levels. First, it helps grab the attention of the millions of Facebook users who watch video daily, stopping them from quickly scrolling past a traditional post. In addition, people spend three times longer watching video that is live compared than they do watching video that is no longer live.

Second, it’s one of the most personal content mediums available. For instance, property managers can easily shoot a live video tour of their available units using their smartphones, speaking directly to prospective residents via the video.

As valuable as your social media partner is for laying a solid foundation for on-page engagement, it is these personal touches that will make your engagement skyrocket.

4. You’re Not Tagging Audience Members in Posts

Similarly, another way to personalize your content is to tag audience members in posts. Remember that your audience loves to be included in comments and to see themselves in photos.

Having a brunch buffet, movie night or happy hour at your community or place of business? Be sure to take a lot of pictures, post them in a timely manner—and tag participants. Facebook users are more likely to engage with or share a post in which they are tagged. Tagging someone also allows the people who follow the tagged person to see the post, thereby increasing your reach.

Furthermore, once your audience starts engaging with personalized posts, they will feel more comfortable overall and will be more likely to engage with all types of posts.

5. You Haven’t Provided Any Incentives

Finally, consider providing an incentive to get the ball rolling and jumpstart engagement. Sweepstakes, contests, special offers and discounts are an effective way to incentivize Facebook users to engage with your page.

You can have the audience comment on or Like a post as a way for them to enter a sweepstakes giveaway. Just be sure that your prize is valuable to your audience, or they won’t see it as a big enough incentive to take the time out of their day to participate.

Another option is to run a contest and choose a winner based on the best entry (or through a drawing). For instance, you can have audience members post their best themed photo (you pick the theme), using a hashtag that’s specific to your business or campaign, and choose a winner based on the amount of engagement each photo garners.

Other campaign options include providing a limited-time special offer or discount. This option offers the ability to capture prospective-lead information as well. You can invite your audience to fill out a form to redeem the special offer, thereby gathering their name, email address and perhaps phone number. (Tip: The fewer form fields you require someone to fill out, the more likely they will be to complete the form.) Then, your sales team can follow up with them to work on converting these leads into clients or customers.

If you would like to run a campaign but aren’t sure where to start, don’t hesitate to reach out to us. We offer several campaign apps that make holding a sweepstakes or providing a special offer a breeze.

Teamwork!

At SOCi, we are proud to be your partner in social media management. We are passionate about what we do and take pride in ensuring that our content is of the utmost quality and that it closely adheres to all industry best practices, so it serves as a solid foundation on which to build your social media presence.

Nonetheless, the most effective way to ensure your business page amasses the high level of engagement you desire is to supplement our content with your own highly personalized posts. This dual approach to an overarching social media strategy provides the best of both worlds to your audience: informative content that piques their interest as well as personalized posts that appeal to their ego.

Like social media in general, executing a social media strategy is a communal effort!