The Right Kind of Engagement

If you are a business owner and have a Facebook Group, then chances are ENGAGEMENT ENGAGEMENT ENGAGEMENT has been beat into your head.  But are you helping yourself or hurting yourself with the engagement posts you are making?

There are two different types of engagement posts:

1. A well thought out post with a specific call to action and a goal
2. A post you threw together quickly because you just need to post something because ENGAGEMENT ENGAGEMENT ENGAGEMENT

One type of engagement post will help your business grow organically.  The other type will ultimately reduce your reach which will probably result in less sales.

An engagement post is meant to engage your customers.  It is meant to open dialogue and be conversational.  When Facebook crawlers see back and forth dialogue, that tells their system that it is a meaningful post that people will see value in and want to interact with... which will increase the number of newsfeeds that post will appear in.... which means more people will actually see your post even if they don't have their notifications set to "see all posts".

The Facebook crawlers are able to see how many times your post has been displayed in a newsfeed and how many people passed that post without engaging (not liking, not commenting, etc).  If there is little (or no) engagement, then Facebook doesn't see any value add in the post and believes people aren't interested in seeing it... which means that post will be shown in very few peoples newsfeeds.  

Wondering what you should do?  Well, here are my suggestions:

1. Never ever ever post something just for the sake of posting SOMETHING.  Not all content is good content.  If it's not good content, then it's bad content.  Stay far away from bad content.
2. Take the time every single day to plan out your engagement posts (or plan them out every week).  One solid engagement post with a ton of dialogue is much better than three engagement posts with no dialogue.
3. Before you figure out what to post, figure out why you are posting it.  What is the end goal of this post?  Is it dialogue to continue building community in your group?  Is there a sale coming up that you want to promote?  Is there an event that you want people to attend?  
4. Once you figure out the why, then you want to identify the call to action.  Is the call to action just to comment (back and forth dialogue)?  Is it to get them to acknowledge they want tagged for a sale or to sign up for marketing material so they are notified of a sale?  Is it to click "going" for an event?
5. Once you have your why and your call to action, then you can write the actual content for the post.  Here are a couple of examples for each of the examples I used:

• Engagement post to build community: It's a rainy Saturday in Indiana, but I'm determined to do something today!  Give me some indoor activity recommendations... I'm thinking binge watching a series on Netflix, maybe a craft, or a book.  Help a sister out!! *post a selfie of being indoors or a photo of the rain
• Engagement post to promote an upcoming sale: I cannot wait for you to see this week's drop!  Several exclusive shirts with VERY limited quantities, and a few brand new things to this shop.... think all things fall!  This stuff is going to go SO FAST... so drop a comment below if you want me to tag you when the sale is live!! *post a sneak peek that will grab their attention
• Engagement post to promote an event: Y'all asked for it.... so here it is!  I'm planning on just going live for those who actually join the live... but if you want me to post the replay, drop your favorite gif below so I can see how many people would want to watch! *post the marketing material you created for the event

Engagement posts don't have to be difficult to create.  They don't have to be long.  They don't have to be earth changing.  They just need to be thought out and genuine.  THAT will make for a good engagement post.