With an average of 1.28 billion active daily users, Facebook is a content marketer’s dream. Having an active social media presence on Facebook is an efficient, economical way to draw attention to your blog, but sometimes posting there can feel like shouting into the void —even when you have thousands of Facebook followers.
Step up your social media strategy by getting a good understanding of the Facebook followers and fans who are actually reading your posts and (hopefully) interacting with them. Armed with that information and some insight into Facebook user behavior, you’ll be in great shape to craft posts that resonate with your audience and dramatically increase engagement.
Learn About Your Facebook Followers and Fans via Facebook Insights
Using Facebook’s analytics, you can get a top-level view of who’s reading and liking your posts. Click Insights at the top of your page, and then choose People from the menu on the left sidebar to see basic demographics:
The Page Views and Actions on Page options let you see who is reading and interacting with your posts by age and gender, location or device.
To break things down even further, navigate over to Facebook’s Audience Insights via the Business Manager page. This tells you a lot more about your audience, including lifestyle, relationship and education metrics, as well as job title.
Facebook User Behavior
All of those demographics tell you who you’re reaching and what they do, but it doesn’t tell you anything about how they use — and consume — social media. Understanding user behavior makes it even easier to bump up audience engagement, as you can take your targeted posts and fine-tune them even further.
Though there are many types of Facebooks users out there, including the Power Users and Contributors, I believe that these are the groups you should put a bit more effort into as you start to build out your social media strategy:
Related: How Facebook is Changing the Marketing Game with Influencers
The Lurkers
Who They Are: This segment of the Facebook population is simply not interested in interacting with brands very often, even though they read your posts and watch your videos. They’re voracious consumers of social media, but you won’t see them liking or sharing your posts often – if ever.
Why They’re Important: Of the 263 million people who use social media, lurkers are the largest segment. Some estimates put the group’s size at 90 percent of all social media users. This gives them dramatic power when it comes to making – or breaking – your brand. They may not show their loyalty with likes and shares, but they will when it comes to choosing which brands to spend their money on.
How to Engage Them: The truth is, you probably can’t. The only way to keep them loyal is to continually provide them with the content they want to see. Use Facebook Insights and blog and website analytics to get a feel for what this powerhouse segment likes and doesn’t like, and tweak your content strategy accordingly to keep them around.
The Influencers
Who They Are: These popular people have a high level of knowledge and credibility in their niche and a large group of followers because of it. Influencers are typically bloggers, activists, industry experts or celebrities, but they can also be ordinary people with a specific expertise. The people who follow influencers tend to be a loyal bunch and typically have a lot of trust in the person.
Why They’re Important: Influencer marketing is slowly edging out the traditional advertising trio: television, radio and print ads. In fact, a full 54 percent of companies now have a budget line item for sponsored social media for their brands, and much of that is devoted to partnerships with influencers. Having an influencer (or two or three) engaging with you publicly on social media or talking about your products exposes your brand to an entirely new audience and gives it almost instant credibility.
How to Engage Them: It’s always wise to create an organic relationship with influencers before reaching out to them. Build that initial relationship by engaging with their content across platforms, including likes, shares and comments. You can often get their attention by crafting high-quality articles that expand on topics they’ve written. Mentioning them or linking to their content in your articles is also a good idea.
The Superfans
Who They Are: This tiny segment of the Facebook community is passionate about the brands they love. Marketing Land likens this group to those football fans who don’t just attend games; they show up at the stadium at dawn and spend the day tailgating. They also make it their mission to convince their friends to attend with them. During games, they’re the first ones to start the wave to cheer on the team.
Why They’re Important: On social media sites, superfans are the ones writing reviews about your products and commenting on your posts. The result is an amplification of all your social media efforts with almost no additional effort on your part.
How to Engage Them: Use social media monitoring tools to find out who your superfans are, and then get to know them. Follow them on the social media platforms they’re active on, and always respond when they comment on your posts. It’s also in your best interests to build up your superfans as brand experts. Make sure they have the media and information they need to be loyal brand ambassadors.
Information is key in the digital age – and especially in the world of social media. Once you know who your fans are and how they consume social media, you’ll be better able to engage them. Remember that some of your most loyal fans may not be vocal and, in fact, may not interact at all. But ignoring this group is not an option.
