Oh, and hey. Have you heard that building engagement on Facebook—with statuses, links, images, videos, even ads—can be a difficult thing? Not just building engagement, mind you, but turning that engagement into tangible connections like shares. Sure, views are great—they get you seen. But shares are how you extend the life of that status, and they’re how you expand your reach in an exponential manner versus a linear one. So how do you turn all those views into those magical, brilliant shares? Let’s dive into the art and science of turning views into shares on Facebook and why engagement is the key to conquering the network.
Why Engagement Matters More Than Ever
Facebook’s algorithm cares about engagement. It no longer overvalues recency (the more contemporary, the higher up the news feed) but rather gives priority to content based on engaging factors such as comments, likes and, crucially, shares – which prove to the algorithm that your content is resonating with users. So, the algorithm is encouraged to place your post higher up the news feed. The more shares, the greater the reach. Of course, you desire eyeballs – but you need more than that. You need engagement, and shares are the gold standard for engagement.
How the Facebook Algorithm Influences Engagement
To figure out how to get people to share, you have to understand Facebook’s algorithm. It evaluates your posts on ‘inventory’ (what’s available for display);’signals’ (which are cues from Facebook on what you’re likely to engage with, such as a comment or reaction); ‘prediction’ (what Facebook thinks you will like, watch and share); and the’score’ (whether or not Facebook likes your content and thus ranks it among the thousands out there). The more it thinks that your content is likely to engage people—based on the’score’—the ’ – the more people will see it, and the more likely they will be to share.
Crafting Shareable Content: It’s All About Value
OK, then, how do you create content people want to share? Value. This is obvious but bears repeating: people share things if they think a) it’s of value, or b) it’s of value to people they know. That’s why Pinterest is taking off: as the weekly US tech magazine Wired points out, Pinterest ‘could be the first deeply emotional social network’. It’s about sharing your discoveries—your highs and your lows—with other people. It’s about empathy. Content that moves people is more likely to be shared.
Emotions Drive Shares
Experiments have demonstrated that ‘emotional content’—such as laughs, surprises, or sadness—tends to perform better’. Hook your viewers on an emotional level, and you increase the likelihood that they’ll share your material. After all, feelings are what compel us humans to share things. We share things that relate personally to us, which reflects what we value within ourselves. What does personality have to do with it? Well, everything.
Leverage User-Generated Content (UGC)
Possibly the easiest way to incite the’sharing’ reflex is by leveraging User Generated Content (UGC). When you engage your followers, they feel involved and there is the added bonus that people are far more likely to share content where they can see themselves.
How to Encourage UGC
Ask questions or pose contests that fans are compelled to create. Consider running a photo contest in which users need to post your original item as part of their submission. Not only does this drive engagement, but it adds an extra viral wrinkle by encouraging shares of the original user posts.
Using Visuals to Maximize Shareability
Images and visuals will always be more engaging than text-centric posts. Posts with images have 2.3x more engagement than the ones without an image, according to available data. A video, infographic, or catchy photo will garner more shares compared to a text-heavy post.
Optimizing Video Content for Shares
Facebook gives native video (video you upload directly to Facebook) preference over, say, embedded YouTube links, so make sure your videos are mobile friendly, short and punchy. And keep in mind that people often watch video with the sound off. Be sure to include captions or text overlays.
The Role of Call-to-Actions (CTAs)
This content will obviously be better than what else is out there, and you just might get your audience to take that leap of faith and share it because you asked nicely. While you might not want to ask to share every post, a little push can go a long way. Don’t be too embarrassed to directly come out with: ‘Please share this with someone who needs this today!’
Strategic Placement of CTAs
Put the call-to-action at the end of your posts or somewhere in your videos where it’s natural—you don’t want to sound like a shill when persuading them to share.
Timing Is Everything: When to Post for Maximum Engagement
Whether it’s 6am or 6pm, timing really is everything. Finding out when your audience is most active can be an invaluable tool in converting views to shares. Facebook Insights tell you when your followers are online and how they interact with your content. Posting when engagement is naturally high—mornings (8am-11am) and evenings (5pm-9pm during weekday evenings)—should optimize your likelihood of being shared.
Experiment with Posting Schedules
Tweak schedule and measure your Average Engagement Run A/B tests to see when your content gets the most engagements and shares and then stop doing the same thing over and over again. Regardless how similar your posts are, something in one or more will engage more readers than others. If you are successful on Thursday at 8pm, try testing the same content on Wednesday or Sunday or alternating your time on Tuesday to find the optimal posting time that will make your audience most responsive.
Collaborating with Influencers to Boost Shares
Generating shares can be boosted with a technique called influencer marketing—you work with influencers in your niche and ride on their coattails, leveraging their engaged audience. Influencers can be considered a form of social proof, where you have a trusted third-party telling their followers that your content is good and worth sharing.
How to Choose the Right Influencers
Seek out influencers whose audiences match your target audience Micro-influencers (influencers who have fewer than 50,000 followers) with small but highly engaged audiences might spark more shares among your followers than celebrities who have huge followings (in the millions) but lower levels of engagement.
Track and Analyze Your Share Metrics
But if you want to keep churning out view-to-share converts, then it’s essential to keep tabs on how those shares are doing. Facebook provides you with some powerful tools to track your analytics, such as how users are responding to your posts. Look closely at the numbers: who’s sharing what and when; what your engagement rate is; how wide your share is reaching; but most of all, how many of those viewers are sharing your material. That last bit of data will help you hone in on what’s working and what’s not.
Facebook Insights: Your Best Friend for Growth
Use the Facebook Insights to see what types of posts drive the most shares. Are videos outperforming images? Are emotional posts more shareable than promotional content? That’s gold for fine-tuning your strategy.
Conclusion
Sure, it isn’t possible to convert Facebook views into shares in the space of a day, but when you have the right tactics in place, it actually isn’t nearly as hard as it seems. Thanks to the Facebook algorithm, to seemingly magical formulas and powers of persuasion, to bright ideas that generate more engagement, more shares, and thus more returns, to emotional stories that captivate audiences who feel compelled to share them with others. It’s all in the details: the understanding of the algorithm, the emotive nature of flawless content, the persuasive power of the influencers—if you want to fill that Facebook space, it’s all about engagement. Experiment, analyse, and refine; if you want to make it to the top of the page, you’ll just have to watch those shares multiply.
FAQs
How can I increase the shareability of my Facebook posts? Make it more shareable, make it more emotionally engaging, make it visual, make it have some call-to-action, make it a video, and ideally, post when people are actually engaging with stuff. You can use influencer creators; you can get user-generated content, okay?
Why are shares more important than likes on Facebook? Shares help to enable your content to go further than your initial audience. The amount of shares your post receives will help you gain more organic reach and visibility. Likes are great for engagement, but shares will help increase your reach beyond just your following.
How can I track the number of shares my posts receive? Facebook Insights. Check how many people are sharing your posts and other engagement metrics. If you have funds at your disposal, you can boost your posts with Facebook’s Ads tool to reach an even broader audience.