10 Proven Strategies To Increase Engagement On Facebook In 2024

As a social media marketer, if you’ve been worried about the low Facebook engagement rate, you’re not alone. The recent changes in Facebook’s algorithms have got marketers sweating due to the consistent decline of organic reach. 

What’s more, organic posts just reach 5.5% of your Facebook page followers. This has led an increasing number of brands to use tools such as Stories, Messenger, and ads to make their content more visible to users. 

What’s the gist of it? Facebook social media strategies that worked for brands in the past may not fly today.  

And that’s why it is all the more important for your business to have a Facebook engagement strategy to retain and increase your Facebook page engagement. 

What is Facebook engagement rate? 

Facebook engagement rate is a metric to track how your audience interacts with the content you share on your Facebook business page. 

Facebook engagement metrics are: 

  • Likes 
  • Comments 
  • Shares 
  • Clicks on your posts 
  • Video views 

As per HubSpot, the average engagement rate for Facebook is 0.18%. Your Facebook page engagement rate gives you an overview of the effectiveness of your social media strategy. 

If your audience is not engaging with your content, it is time to ask yourself: how can I get more engagement on Facebook? 

10 Proven tips to increase your Facebook engagement in 2024

1. Post on the best times when your audience is online

The truth is: there is no universal best time to post on Facebook. Facebook’s Brian Boland explains why

“Each time a person logs onto Facebook, there are 1,500 stories that could appear in their News Feed. For people with lots of friends and Page likes, as many as 15,000 potential stories could appear. 

As a result, the competition in the News Feed is increasing and you’re competing against 1,500 other posts for a place in the News Feed.” 

So then, when should you post on Facebook? The answer to this lies in: 

What your data tells you

You can leverage your Facebook Page Insights for getting accurate user data. Under the Post tab, you get all the required information about when your Facebook Page followers are online for each day of the week.

Whenever it’s relevant 

This happens to be less specific as some content works best in the moment or at a time when it’s more relevant.  

For example, for your CPG brand’s Facebook business page, content related to the launch of a new product tends to perform well following the press announcement

2. Focus on user-generated content (UGC)

One of the biggest mistakes brands make is to contain themselves within the box. Only posting about your own brand and product will become repetitive and mundane after a certain time, and your audience will tune out for something more exciting. 

Instead, UGC can be used across all stages of the buyer’s purchase funnel to increase your Facebook engagement rate and conversions or in other way, you can embed Facebook feed to your website to do the same. With consumers 2.4 times more likely to view UGC video content as authentic compared to branded content, it is essential to make UGC a part of your Facebook marketing strategy. 

Here are some tips to get the most out of your user-generated content strategy. 

  • Set the right hashtags: Encourage your fans, followers, and users to use your unique hashtag while posting about your products.

The best part, you can track the hashtags and keywords to understand what users and businesses are saying about your brand as well as any topic using Facebook analytics tools

  • Be strategic in setting goals: They could be increased conversion rates, higher brand engagement, educating more users, and building your brand’s trust. 
  • Always request permission and credit the original creator: Resharing content without explicit permission is a surefire way to kill goodwill and annoy your best brand advocates. 
  • Include UGC in Facebook ads: Don’t shy away from asking customers for a photo or video review. And once you get them, include them in your Facebook ads to add a compelling story angle that builds trust. 

In addition to these steps, track your UGC campaign using a social media reporting tool like Keyhole. Instead of manually updating spreadsheets, Keyhole automates the reporting to deconstruct the conversations behind your hashtags and measure and share the performance within seconds. 

3. Level up your photos game

Undoubtedly, visual content is killing it on Facebook and all other social media channels. Infact, as per a study, 25 out of 35 industries had images as their primary type of posts on Facebook. 

A majority of Facebook business pages post photos, which indicates that people prefer engaging with a visual rather than a wall of text or a link redirecting to another website. 

However, it’s not just about posting any picture. You need to be strategic about what kind of visual content you share. For example, using the ‘blur photo background‘ technique can help bring the point of focus to your products or message. This approach subtly highlights the subject of the image while maintaining an aesthetically pleasing visual.

Plainly put, if you want to improve your Facebook engagement, go visual. What you need to remember is that the type of images you post has a massive impact on your performance. 

What are the types of posts that get the most engagement on Facebook? 

  • Images with striking colors and stunning landscapes do well 
  • User testimonials 
  • Memes and GIFs 
  • Behind-the-scene photos 
  • Product images 

For inspiration, GoPro’s Facebook page is a perfect example. They have a great mix of stunning user-generated content as well as visuals. 

What’s notable about their visual Facebook posts is how often they also share tips on how to use GoPro products, in an effort to boost their Facebook engagement rate. 

4. Leverage Facebook video marketing

When it comes to engaging user interaction, nothing comes close to video content. As an interactive and incredible storytelling medium, Facebook video marketing goes a long way to effectively communicate with your users.

A few handy tips while using videos to increase your Facebook business page engagement rate are: 

  • Upload your videos directly on Facebook: Facebook algorithm prefers native videos that are posted on the platform. According to Quintly’s study of 6 million FB posts, videos that are directly uploaded on Facebook on average witness a better engagement rate by 110% and comparatively higher share than YouTube links by 478%. 
  • Experiment with square videos: Square videos are easy to watch and more popular as well. They normally receive higher engagement, average views, and completion rates than our landscape videos. Leverage them wisely.
  • Add captions: As per a study, 85% of Facebook Videos are watched with sound off and 39% of consumers are more likely to finish videos with subtitles. 

Bite Toothpaste Bits is a great brand that leverages video content on Facebook to educate customers about different products. Their videos are not fancy, but short, concise, and enough to make the audience feel comfortable purchasing from them.

What we also loved is how the brand uses customer reviews in its Facebook video ads, which can be an effective Facebook engagement strategy. 

5. Avoid using engagement baits

As Facebook continues its crackdown on clickbaits with regular changes to the Facebook algorithm, brands are forced to rethink how they earn engagement on their posts. 

For example, explicitly asking for likes and shares is considered engagement bait, and Facebook’s algorithms will penalize you by pushing your posts down the News Feed. 

That said, it’s okay to ask a genuine question to your followers for their opinion and feedback, the way Burger King does. 

In this video, Burger King asked fans to help name its sourdough starter. 

Think about the different ways in which you can encourage fans to comment, and discuss your posts, to inspire even more engagement. 

6. Go live

According to a Facebook report, “People spend 3x more time watching a Facebook Live video on average compared to a video that’s no longer live” and “people comment 10 times more on Facebook Live videos than on regular videos”.

With this in mind, it is worth knowing that when it comes to Facebook videos, compared to pre-recorded ones, live videos perform better, have the potential to reach more people, and increase your Facebook engagement rate. 

That’s because, when you go live, your video shoots to the top of your follower’s Facebook news feed. Also, people who regularly interact with your page or have recently done so get a notification letting them know you are live. 

Even better, after the live broadcast is over, the video appears on your Facebook business page. From there, you can continue promoting it on your site, share it on other social media platforms, or share snippets of the video on your page. 

Some effective tips for going live on Facebook are: 

  • Have a Q&A session or Ask me Anything (AMA) session
  • Share an event, work processes, or even office ambiance
  • Interview industry experts
  • Share educational content or how-to tips 

SaaS platform for marketers Wishpond uses video posts to engage its users. Regularly they go live to interact with viewers and educate them on distinct marketing hacks.

7. Boost your popular posts 

Like all other social media channels, Facebook has a clear preference for content with high engagement. In simpler terms, posts that receive more likes, reactions, comments, and video views are more likely to appear in people’s news feeds.

If you have a budget for Facebook advertising, consider boosting your page’s top-performing posts. The audience has engaged with these posts in the past, which makes them suitable for boosting. 

With the right Facebook ad targeting strategy, your posts would continue to engage and reach more people. 

Some best practices to make your Facebook-boosted post ads more engaging are: 

  • Narrow down your audience or create a custom audience 
  • Shorten text and keep your message clear and concise 
  • Restrict the time period as their performance declines when you run them for over a week

Why this ad stands out is because of the heading “Brilliant” which compels the reader to know more about Amazon products. 

8. Reuse and recycle your top posts

Along with boosting your top posts, another great way to increase your Facebook engagement rate is by recycling them. Get more value out of your content by reposting high-quality content, as these posts generate as much (or even more) reach and engagement as the original post. Essentially, it doubles the value of your high-performing content. 

One way to do so is by changing the format a bit, to make the format look fresh. For example, you posted a blog post with a list as a caption. Now, you could re-post it with a video, add an image, or ask a question. 

When reposting on Facebook, it is advisable to wait for a few weeks before reposting the same post as your followers might get bored from seeing the same post too often. 

9. Leverage Stories to increase Facebook engagement

What makes Facebook Stories a popular type of content is the “urgency factor” owing to its 24-hour availability. Your brand can take advantage and create time-sensitive content to build excitement and urgency among your followers. 

In addition to this, you can add interactive elements such as polls and voting stickers, to garner more engagement on your Stories. For example, grocery delivery company Instacart hosted a trivia game through Stories to test the audience’s food knowledge.

10. Analyze the performance of your Facebook business page 

Since Facebook shut down its standalone analytics tool in 2021, investing in a Facebook analytics tool has become vital for businesses. 

Keyhole’s Facebook analytics tool allows you to: 

  • Look into your audience demographics, 
  • The performance of your posts, 
  • Track your competitor’s business page and analyze how well other pages are performing,
  • Unlock sentiment analysis, and 
  • Recommendations to grow your page. 

If you want to dig deeper into your campaigns’ performance then Meta incrementality testing is something you should try, given it brings you insights on the real impact your advertising has on the revenue.

Alongside, what makes Keyhole one of the most widely used Facebook analytics tools is its extensive reporting capabilities. 

A Netherlands-based online retail firm used Keyhole’s social listening to maximize audience interaction. They leveraged sentiment analysis to filter out negative sentiments faster. Based on these updates, their customer success team could actively reply to those posts and deliver a better customer experience. 

Have you made a Facebook engagement strategy for your business page yet? 

If you’ve had difficulty driving engagement on Facebook, these 10 tips are for you. Start by implementing 2-3 of these strategies and use a Facebook analytics and reporting tool to measure the effectiveness. 

An important thing to remember is that these Facebook engagement strategies may take time to show results. To ensure that your posts get the visibility you wish, consider using a Facebook analytics tool like Keyhole. 

Related Articles:

16 Best Facebook Analytics Tools To Automate FB Reporting

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Frequently Asked Questions

What is a good Facebook engagement rate?

The average Facebook engagement rate is between 1-2%. Anything over 3% is considered good. In a survey by RivalIQ, retail had the lowest engagement rate of 0.67% per post and education had the highest Facebook engagement rate of 3.5% per post.

How to increase Facebook engagement rate?

The proven strategies to increase your Facebook for business engagement rate in 2024 are:
1. Post on the best times when your audience is online
2. Focus on UGC
3. Post high-quality content and images
4. Leverage Facebook videos
5. Go live
6. Boost your popular posts
7. Reuse your top posts
8. Leverage Facebook stories
9. Use a social media analytics tool
10. Avoid engagement baits

What is the Facebook engagement rate formula?

Facebook engagement rate (%) = Total engagement a post received/ total number of impressions on that post.