4 Fun Ways to Improve Your Facebook Engagement
Published November 6, 2013
Do you need to increase the visibility of your Facebook page posts?
Are you looking for fresh ideas to quickly create engagement on your Facebook page?
In this article, you’ll discover four ways you can create better engagement on your Facebook page using social game.
Why Games?
If you’re tearing your hair out worrying about the number of fans interacting with yourFacebook business page, moderating your page may not be much fun. Worse still, you may be missing out on getting to know your fans on a deeper level.
The good news is that initiating simple social games on your page’s timeline gives your page interaction a boost.
Social games on your timeline encourage comments, shares and likes, and build a sense of community around your brand. Plus, as a side benefit, they are also a lot of fun for you and your fans.
Why Engagement Matters on Facebook
There are more than 15 million business pages on Facebook. Add in Facebook’s hundreds of complex algorithms that work behind the scenes to help people see what matters most to them, and it’s little wonder that page owners find it frustrating to maintain news feed visibility. Because of the algorithms, fans don’t see all updates from every page they like in their news feed.
But every time a fan likes or interacts with a particular type of post on your page, Facebook uses that information to determine what content your fan likes most, and makes that content more prominent in their news feed.
So if your fans are mainly interacting with your images, they’ll see more of your images; if they’re mainly interacting with your text posts, they’ll see more of your text posts. Get the picture?
Initiating social games is good for your Facebook page.
Using your business page timeline to feature fun social games creates community among your fans and brings them back to your page over and over again, giving them more opportunities to get to know you and your brand.
If you want to improve your visibility without spending lots of money on Facebook ads, initiate social games to draw your fans back to your page.
Each of these games can be run successfully on a page timeline or in a group—which is good news if you administer both!
#1: Take Your Best Guess
With the recent changes to the Facebook Page Guidelines, businesses can now run competitions on their timelines. For information on the latest Facebook policy, check out our post here.
You can choose to run the “What’s Your Best Guess?” game as a timeline competition with a prize or simply to create engagement. Admittedly, it’s more fun for your fans if there’s a prize on offer.
The "What's Your Best Guess" game can feature anything in any quantity. Candy in a jar is a popular choice, though!
How the game works.
Buy a quantity of anything you think will interest your fans. You can choose candy, buttons, balloons, branded promotional items like golf balls or even toys. Fill a jar, then take a photo of the jar and post it to your business page timeline.
If you don’t offer a prize, all you need do is post the image with the words: “What’s your best guess? Post your answer in the comments below.”
If you run the game as a competition with a prize on your page’s timeline, you’ll need to ensure you comply with Facebook Page Guidelines and be very clear about what the prize on offer is so there’s no confusion for your fans.
As there is just one correct answer, let people know what happens if there’s a tie. If there’s only one prize, an easy-to-implement tiebreaker is to simply state that whoever posts first wins.
To determine the winner in case of a tie, check to see who posted first by looking at the time stamp on each comment.
See who posted first on a page by looking at the time stamp on each comment. You may also want to put a time limit on the game so people know to post their answer within a specific time frame.
This will encourage fans to get in early and makes it easier for you to administer the game.
#2: Ask the Next Friend
“Ask the Next Friend” is a fun and simple game that quickly builds camaraderie and community.
How the game works.
Simply kick-start the thread by posing an “either/or” question andstate that the next person to comment should answer in one word, then pose their own “either/or” question.
Keep games simple for lightning-fast engagement on your page or in your Facebook group.
In this example from Queensland Business Group‘s “Ask the Next Friend” game, 95 people commented and not one person went off topic in the thread.
#3: Name Your Life’s Feature Film
Games that help your community get to know each other are awesome for engagement and relationship-building on Facebook. In this game, your fans name a movie that reflects their business or life.
The answers will help fans forge closer relationships with one another.
How the game works.
Ask the question: “If your life/business was a (movie/book/song), which one would it be?”
Remember to kick-start the conversation by answering the question yourself and invite your followers to share the thread so that more people can participate.
Games can help your community members get to know each other better.
#4: Tell the Story
Have you ever read one of those books where you choose what happens next?
This game is kind of like that. One of the best things you can do on Facebook is to harness the power of storytelling. Involve your fans in the storytelling to make them the stars in your brand’s show.
Use this simple social game to co-create a story with your followers. Not only does this game result in a fun and engaging story, but you’ll also get to know some new fans on your page.
Use a graphic to share instructions on how to play the game.
How the game works.
Create a graphic that shares the first sentence in the story and outlines the instructions for participating in the game. You’ll also place the first sentence in the description.
It’s a great idea to post a follow-up status update to share the story as it evolves. This not only increases participation; it also lets you restore the story if Facebook mixes up the order of comments.
Post an update of the story every so often to encourage greater participation.
Things to keep in mind when you run social games on Facebook.
Make sure your pictures are clear, attention-grabbing and preferably square. I recommend making your images the optimal timeline size of 403 x 403 pixels or larger. You can actually size your images up to a maximum of 2048 x 2048 pixels, so when people click the image, it takes up the whole window.
Include the game instructions and any rules in the post description, not just on the image.
Keep the instructions simple for people to follow so they don’t balk at participating.
Kick-start the process yourself to encourage others to participate or tip off some avid fans to help you get the process going.
Round up some willing fans to help initiate the comments.
If your post is getting great engagement, consider boosting the post to further increase engagement and visibility.
Over to you
Creating engagement for your Facebook page doesn’t have to be time-intensive, complicated or cost you a lot of money.
With a little imagination and a sense of fun, you can use one of these games or come up with one of your own toencourage participation from your fans so they’ll see more of your posts in their news feed.
What do you think? Have you played social games on your page’s timeline? What were the results? What ideas for games can you share? Leave a comment below.
Cas McCullough is the founder of Content Marketing Cardiology. She works with small business owners and entrepreneurs who want to use powerful content to make a big difference. Other posts by Cas McCullough»
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