It hit me like a ton of bricks when I heard Holly Homer say it. “People go on Facebook to talk about themselves!” Lightning strike, bells ringing, duh!
It makes complete sense! To increase interaction on Facebook, encourage people to talk about themselves! We sometimes post little snippets of our personal lives on our business page, and those posts do get some interaction, but most people would rather not hear about us, they want to talk about themselves! Toby Keith, you say it so well.
Holly outlines how she turned her Facebook page around in this You Tube video. And boy did her page see huge growth and interaction, which in turn led to more traffic to her site. Check out the video for sure! This week's challenge is derived from just one of her 5 tips, so be sure to listen to all the others.
And where did I learn about Holly Homer's tips? Amy Lynn Andrews Useletter of course! If you are not already subscribed to receive her weekly Useletter, do not delay! Amy always manages to find the best and most unique advice out there for growing your business. It's a weekly must read for anyone serious about business growth.
A few months ago we did some Facebook experimenting to determine if there was an optimal time to post on your Facebook page. Use that knowledge you gained then, and apply it to this week's challenge. This week I want you to post all your usual stuff to your business Facebook page, but add another post that gets people talking about themselves. After you post your question, stick around and engage with the answers. Do a post like this everyday, and let's see what happens with engagement on our business Facebook pages.
Some sample questions you might want to try: Where do you live? Cats, dogs, or neither? What's the best book you read last year? And don't forget to do questions that relate to your business niche as well.
To recap: Post a daily question on Facebook that encourages people to talk about themselves!
Don't forget to check in next week on the blog for the update. I can't wait to hear about your results!
Be Brilliant,
Sarah and Beth Anne
Update:
Each day this past week I did a Facebook post designed to encourage people to talk about themselves. To see my results I went to my Facebook Insights. Recent posts are on the front page. Here are the results:
I definitely did get some reach and interaction from some of my posts and questions this week. It seems that my posts about Downton Abbey and classic movies from childhood received the most interaction. Good to know! However my question about your business struggles also elicited some engagement. To be perfectly honest, I was hoping these questions would get more interaction than they did. That led me to wonder what sort of interaction percentage other business Facebook pages receive.
Right below the posts section is the pages to watch section. Beth Anne had previously added a few pages to this section when she did her Facebook tutorial video on this topic. I went ahead and added a few more. This section allows you to see how many posts other pages did that week, how much engagement they received, and how many total fans they have.
I did a little calculation on the 7 pages we are watching. I divided their engagement for the week by their total page likes to determine an engagement percentage. Most pages we are watching had a 2% or less engagement rate (5 of the 7 pages we are watching). Money Saving Mom had a 9% engagement rate, and Empress of Dirt had a 14% engagement rate! I think I'll head over to her Facebook page to see what she's doing! Brilliant Business Moms came in at a 7% engagement rate, so I am really pleased with that. It's amazing how a little perspective makes a big difference. I was previously pretty disappointed with my experiment, but to see that the engagement we received is much higher than other pages made me think the effort was well worth it.
I am definitely going to try and keep this up as much as possible. Beth Anne made a good observation this week that not only do people love to talk about themselves, but as women and moms, we also love to help others. I definitely intend to pose some helping questions in the future too.
I must say it was really fun to interact with more of you this week, which is another reason to keep this up.
How about you? How was your engagement this week when employing this strategy? How does your percentage compare to pages you are watching?
-Sarah