A Facebook business page can be a valuable business-growing tool. But like any tool, if you’re not sure how to use it correctly, it won’t be all that useful. And because your Facebook page is often the first impression prospects have of your business, it’s important to learn how to post in a way that attracts and engages your audience.
In this blog, we’ll look at some best practices for Facebook business posts — strategies to grow your reach, boost your follower count, and increase audience engagement — so you can learn to wield this powerful tool to grow your business. Let’s dig in.
To create engaging Facebook posts, you first need to understand your audience: who they are, where they are, and what they’re looking for.
If you don’t know who your audience is or how to connect with them, your first stop should be your Page Insights. Here, you can learn more about where your audience members are from, the types of posts they’ve previously interacted with, and more. (However, if you don’t have much of a following yet, your Insights might not give you much information until you grow your follower count a bit.)
Another tactic to get to know your audience is to experiment. Try creating different types of posts and pay attention to the engagement you get on each post.
Notice which posts get the most engagement (likes, comments, and shares). What’s different about those posts? Examine the photos or videos you used, the message you shared, and when you posted it, and try to determine what drew your audience to those posts. Then, create more posts like them.
Posting consistently is KEY to improving your engagement on Facebook. The trick is to find the right cadence: If you post too much, you’ll overwhelm your audience with content and lose their interest; but if you don’t post often enough, you won’t see much benefit from using Facebook and your audience may wonder if your account is even active.
Just like Goldilocks, you need to find a posting schedule that’s juuuuust right.
But how much is enough? Good question. That will vary based on the business and the audience. But the truth is, consistent posting is more important than the actual number of times you post per week.
So post only as often as you can be consistent. If you can’t consistently post five posts per week, try two or three. If you can stay consistent with that schedule, you’ll start to see results.
Pro tip: To make the most of your posts, go to your Insights and see when your audience is most active. Publish your posts during these times for the best engagement.
When your posts are accompanied by quality images, they’ll be more likely to get more likes, shares, and comments. Photos make your business seem more approachable.
And while using professional or stock photos on your website is important, on social media you can be a little more casual. Photos you take with your phone can actually come across as more personal and relatable to your audience. In fact, some of our favorite team photos have been off-the-cuff ones we took ourselves!
Just make sure:
Images can help enhance the long-form content you share as well, such as blogs, case studies, or articles.
As our own Mindy Traylor says, “I think Facebook is a good place for some longer-form content, but it's more engaging when it's paired with images.”
While Facebook posts can be a great way to direct people to your website, blog, or products, if you include outbound links in every post your engagement can suffer. This is because Facebook (and other social media platforms) prioritizes and ranks content that keeps people there over content that directs them to other sites.
So while you should definitely share links to your blogs, email signup, products, and, occasionally, relevant third-party articles, make sure to also integrate:
Including unlinked posts like these in your social media strategy will help you develop trust with your audience by providing no-strings-attached value…which will ultimately improve your engagement.
Video is among the top-performing content on Facebook, so if you aren’t using video yet, it’s time to start! Video is a great way to communicate and entertain your audience with:
…and more! Whether you choose to post Reels or Stories, chat with your audience via Facebook Live, or all of the above, video will help you grab the attention of your audience in a way that static posts simply can’t.
To make your best videos, here are a few tips:
And finally, remember that, as with photos, your videos don’t have to be perfect!
Our own social media video maven Sondra O'Day says, “A common misconception from our clients is that their content (especially video content) has to be perfect, but it’s not true! Be real and be human.”
Avoid posting controversial takes (especially during an election year 🥴). As the kids say, “it’s not the vibe.” People are already so divided — there’s no need to add fuel to the fire. Plus, it reflects negatively on your business.
“Think really hard about posting anything political on your business Facebook page and the impact it might have on your business. I’m all about standing up for what you believe in…but save those thoughts for your personal page.” ~Kari Switala
While posting a spicy rant might get you some immediate engagement, it won’t always be positive engagement. And in the long run it will only serve to hurt your relationship with your audience. (Note: this doesn’t mean you can never talk about a cause you believe in. Just keep it positive and approachable.)
Instead, post positive content that provides helpful information. Think about what you can offer that will bring something of value to your audience, such as:
If there’s one way to ensure you’ll “win” at social media, it’s to share useful information and advice in a friendly, welcoming way.
Taking the time to respond to your followers’ questions, comments, and concerns on Facebook not only helps improve engagement, it’s also just good business practice! Imagine if you never answered your phone or responded to voicemail messages. That wouldn’t exactly be great for business, would it?
The same is true on Facebook.
Facebook (and any social media platform, for that matter) isn’t just another place to advertise your business. It’s a place to connect with your audience, provide helpful information, and offer customer support.
Make sure to assign a team member (or two) to keep an eye on your page’s comments and direct messages and respond to them promptly. After all, if you want more people to engage with your content, you also have to be willing to respond to that engagement! Plus, if you’re in the habit of replying in a timely manner, you’ll get a cute little badge on your business page showing that you’re responsive.
When you write a response, keep it friendly, helpful, and personalized. Please don’t resort to generic, copy-and-paste responses! Personalized replies show that you’re interested in connecting with your followers. Plus, it’s yet another place you can highlight your brand’s personality!
Boosting your best-performing posts is a great way to engage a wider audience and draw them to your page. “Boosting” a post is similar to creating a Facebook ad, but simpler. Essentially, you spend an amount of your choosing to widen the reach of your post so that more people who don’t already follow you can engage with it.
In other words, boosting your Facebook posts puts your content in front of more people.
But, you might ask, why would I spend money on posts that are already doing well? Wouldn’t it make more sense to boost ones that don’t get much engagement? And I hear you, but think about it:
The fact that a certain post is doing well indicates that it’s connecting with people. Boosting it is more likely to get you increased engagement vs a post that isn’t generating much interest.
At Wild Fig, we’ve had great success with boosting client Facebook posts. Here are a couple of examples:
At Anytime Fitness in Red Wing, MN, owner Corey O’Day had two trainers quit at the same time. He needed a new personal trainer immediately so he could focus his time on running the business. To help him out, the team at Wild Fig wrote and designed an eye-catching graphic to post on Facebook, advertising the open position.
We boosted the post for $100, and within a week, the post garnered almost 1,600 post engagements, 68 link clicks, and 5 messaging conversations! Corey ended up hiring two new trainers — one of them within just days of posting the ad! In the midst of a labor shortage, this was unheard of! Talk about a quick win!
We recently helped the Electrical Association of Minnesota promote their electrical apprentice program on Facebook. They wanted to reach people in both MN and ND (a new market for them), so we created and boosted a post for them. After only 17 days, their post had almost 24,000 engagements and 766 link clicks. They also received several ND registrations for their apprentice program. They now have more apprentices registered than they did last year at this time!
You can see how quick, easy, and effective it is to boost posts on Facebook!
In addition to your most popular posts, you might also consider boosting posts for events, job openings, or other time-sensitive things to get them in front of as many people as possible as quickly as possible.
So give it a try — take a look at your posts each month and consider boosting the ones that bring you the most engagement.
And there you have it, our best practices for Facebook business posts! I hope these tips help you feel more confident in creating social media content that connects with your audience.
If you’re looking for more support for your Facebook and other social media marketing content, the Wild Fig team has your back! Learn all about our social media services here, then schedule an exploratory call to discuss your needs and how we can help.