SEO, SEM, FB Marketing, IM Here and Now.

While social media marketing is one of the best ways to build your business for social proof, search engine optimization and attracting new business, it can be tricky to get followers engaged with your brand no matter how beautiful your set your business page up. To increase the value of your social media engagement, figuring out how to get them to engage with your page is one of the most important tasks you can do beyond creating valuable content and investing in advertising.

Studies show that most Facebook Engagement users have around 100 friends and “Like” the same amount or more of pages that interest them, such as their favorite brands and celebrities. With all those friends and other pages, Facebook user’s newsfeeds are scrolling quickly and the typically only engage with what jumps out at them right away. With this in mind, creating eye catching posts with great images is one way to encourage them to engage.

Along with eye catching posts, try to keep the updates to fewer than 140 characters. People just aren’t interacting as much with longer posts, but a post that immediately grabs their attention and is short to read will hook them. Many marketers will tell you 100 characters or under is the true sweet spot for the length of your posts that will also allow easy cross posting to Twitter or other social media accounts. Make sure to use calls to action such as asking them a question or asking them to “Like” or “Share” the post.

If you are using URLS in your posts to get people to click through to your site for more information or to enter a drawing or take advantage of a promotion, make sure you use a true URL. Buddy Media has found that these result in engagement three times more than shortened URLS because people don’t trust the URL as much if they can’t see where it is going to take them.

Along with posting attention grabbing posts that are less than 140 characters and use real URLs if you are using them, timing is the next biggest part of how effective you will be. Posting when the majority of your followers are engaged with their Facebook pages will offer the best results. Finally, testing all of your efforts to find out which types of posts work best for your market is critical so you can duplicate your efforts to keep the engagement growing. When you find the best collection of post types, know when to post and include a great call to action, you will find your engagement increasing significantly.