How to Increase Engagement On Your Facebook Business Page

Welcome to another Phyxter blog post! This week we continue our Facebook series and teach you how to improve your customer relationships by engaging them on your FB business page. Have you ever posted an amazing picture of your work truck or a status about current deals on various parts, but it didn’t get many likes? Or even more basic, does your page not have as many followers as you would have hoped? Well, this post (and this sub-series) is here to help you with that!

WHAT IS ENGAGEMENT, AND WHY DO YOU NEED IT?

When your Facebook audience interacts with your page, it’s called engagement, and it means you’re doing something that has caught their attention. They engage by liking, commenting, and sharing your posts and content, which leads to better organic reach, and that means more people get to know your business, potentially follow you and hopefully, boost your sales - for free! So, what are we waiting for? Let’s get started!

CONTENT

Let’s start with the impact tools, CONTENT. I think it’s safe to say that if you want to increase engagement, you need to post engaging content!

• Add pictures! People respond and interact more with visual media. So instead of JUST talking about a cool new service you’re offering, add a picture or video that relates to the issue your product or service could fix.

Facebook ALGORITHM NOTE: Post your video directly to Facebook (when you’re writing a post, click on ‘Photo/Video’ to add one) instead of posting it on YouTube and embedding the video on your post, Facebook will show it more frequently and your video will have a greater reach!

• So, you’re posting a picture or a video, remember to add an interesting tagline with it. The most successful formats are:
• Questions, like, what’s the one tool you’d never leave the house without?
• Fill-in-the-blank, like, a clogged toilet is like my ___
• Something funny, like a relevant knock-knock joke!

Hint: Our meme page on Facebook “Bored Tradesmen” has some funny memes and jokes. Feel free to use them!

• Remember to add a Call-To-Action. This will depend on your goal. A CTA is mainly a sentence that is meant to encourage a particular action from your audience. Do you have a pre-winter inspection you want to sell? Simply say, “Don’t wait for your furnace to break in the middle of the night, book your furnace inspection now at www.yourwebsite.com”.
• Surprisingly, Hashtags don’t do too well on Facebook. Posts without any hashtags or only a couple get better engagement than their counterparts.

SCHEDULE

 Now that you know what to post, let’s talk about WHEN you should post.

• Use ‘INSIGHTS’ to figure out when your audience is online and active. Posting around these times will improve your reach.
• You’ll be way more successful if you can define exactly who your audience is. Maybe your niche is working in condos…so condo owners might be a good place to start.
• Hint: your audience is probably active around 8 am in the morning, 11:15 am or before lunch, and around 7:45 pm at night. For more accurate timings, check ‘INSIGHTS’ and post during peak times.
• Don’t keep bombarding your audience with posts throughout the day. A couple times a day should be good enough. Again, remember to check when your audience is online!
• Holidays based posts are always a winner! You could even do a funny ‘national day for XYZ’ post. Like April 25 is “national hug a plumber day”

ENGAGE

To increase your engagement, you need to engage more, and not only with potential customers, but also with other companies! Side note: There’s some amazing companies out there that have done some amazing things, why not take a look at what they’ve done and try to improve upon it.

• Respond quickly to inbox messages and funny or meaningful comments on a post. For example, a customer could ask you about your work hours on a random post, replying ASAP would help with your sales! For comments, a like will be enough!
• When a customer posts something of their own, show them support and re-post it, believe me that it will be appreciated. You can even sponsor competitions to get the ball rolling. Ask customers to post a video of them showing off their new lighting fixture you installed for them. Or maybe a picture of you after you cleared that nasty clog! A good rule of thumb for all your social media, every time a customer mentions you or your business on any social media channel, “LIKE, SHARE, THANK THEM MAN!”
• Interact with brands that share a similar audience with you. It’ll ensure that you get seen by new people!
• Hint: Phyxter’s Facebook page is one example ??
• Hint: A good idea is to be active on DIY sites. Whenever someone asks how to unclog a sink without a plumber, respond with a “Use the baking soda and vinegar trick… trust me, I’m a plumber. If that doesn’t work, give me a call!”. That builds trust! This will work even when your customers are looking for quote requests. Giving them an option to save money and handle the task themselves (but mentioning your contact info too!) will ensure them that you genuinely want to help them!
• In a pickle about what to post? Sharing industry related news never hurts. Talking about current trends or topics in the skilled trades will ensure that you get multiple responses! Pinterest is a great place that stays current and has a lot of great content, I’m sure you’ll be able to get some ideas from there??

ANALYZE

Finally, you can learn a lot from your previous posts – what worked and what didn’t.

• LEARN. Don’t treat that viral ‘plumbing hack’ post as an outlier, instead try replicating that success! If you thought that ‘how to clear your drain using baking soda’ post that got no likes is useless, think again – you can figure out why it didn’t work.
• Recycle your best posts. But only after 4-5 months. We know you’re proud of your work truck but posting a picture of it every week means people will start hating the look of it!

Thank you so much for reading! I hope you found this page useful. We will be back next week to teach you how to use Facebook Reviews to boost your sales and increase your credibility. As always, feel free to contact us at [email protected] or leave a comment below.

Written By,

Mahima Jhalani, Business Success Associate at Phyxter.

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