5 psychological tricks to foster customer engagement on Facebook

Everyone knows that Facebook is geared to be the linchpin of social media engagement. While Twitter still holds the lead in direct access interaction through its public-reach settings, Facebook gives us the opportunity to do much more through the arena of a single platform.

Boasting an active user-base of 1.86 billion users (as of the fourth quarter of 2016), Facebook is the perfect platform for advertisers and marketers to showcase their brand and content.

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However, the downside to its reach is that it becomes the go-to platform for every brand out there. Hence, competing for the attention of a user faced with multiple options is challenging. However, a way to approach this challenge is to up your marketing strategies in a way that you can directly engage with users.

Ask questions

The best way to engage with the everyday busy user on a platform as diverse as Facebook is by asking them questions. To this end, you need to craft your content in a way that it compels users to return to your page and answer your questions. This is possibly why a company like BuzzFeed can claim an easy reach of a million readers per month. A large chunk of their content is interactive, be it through personality quizzes or polls for varying subjects.

Use pictures

A picture really is worth a thousand words. As a Facebook user yourself, you might find that you end up clicking on content accompanied by an attractive picture or video more than that which is simply text-based. Hence, you should make it a point to use visual aids to strengthen the appeal of your content or ad, thereby attracting more users to your pages.

K.I.S.S.

Before your mind conjures up something promiscuous, in the world of content creation, K.I.S.S. stands for ‘Keep it short and simple’. However, this sounds a lot easier than actually executing it. Steve Jobs once said, “Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But, it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.”

And that’s the trick. You may bust your neck for weeks, moulding a product or service to make it more user-accessible, and in the process have it appear simpler than the effort you put in. However, in the end, it is this simple nature of the product or service which will attract the every-busy Facebook users to your pages, no matter how much blood and sweat went behind creating it.

String theory

There’s a popular ‘string theory’ in psychology, which will help you understanding the mechanics of social media marketing a bit better. Pulling a string leaves it a straight string, while pushing the same string creates a snarled mess. The quickest way from point A to point B is a straight line. Why force that string to follow that path when you could practically invite it to do the same thing?

Similarly, if you try to force your content upon your audience, you will fail to incite a positive reaction. However, if you take the same content and offer it to the same audience as solutions to a problem or a guide to everyday struggles for instance, you will definitely see users turning towards your page.

Contests

Finally, you should look towards inciting the one characteristic that all humans harbour within themselves – the desire to win. In a less ‘Chariots of Fire’ manner, holding contests and competitions is a sure-shot way to initiate customer-engagement on a platform as vast as Facebook. Be it weekly, monthly, or even quarterly, you should make sure to hold at least one or two contests, quizzes, or competitions and offer prizes to the winners.

Remember, consumers only choose content when they feel they have something to gain from it. So tailor your content accordingly. Do you have any other tips to offer? Do mention them in the comments below.