Have You Reacted Yet?

Earlier this year, Facebook added 5 additional “reactions” to Like. These allow us to react to any post in a more nuanced way. Now, in addition to Liking a post by giving it the thumbs-up sign, we can show that we love it, or indicate that it “wowed us,” made us laugh, sad or angry by clicking on the appropriate reaction symbol. (If you change your mind about your reaction, you can click on the symbol again and it will disappear.) Making more reactions available to Facebook users, encourages more interaction between the post and the followers—one of the primary purposes of Facebook.

When we are managing a Facebook Page for our organization or ministry, we sometimes forget that Facebook was built to support relationships. Even though its use has expanded from individuals to organizations, businesses, and groups of all kinds, it is still true that Pages that focus on supporting relationships with their followers are the most active and most successful.

What Engages Your Followers?

When people react to our posts, they are engaging with them/us. Engagement is one of the key measurements that Facebook tracks for us in the Insights area of a Facebook Page to which Page Administrators have access. The engagement measure includes four things: reactions, clicks on the post, comments, and shares.

My experience with a number of church Facebook pages, is that there are certain kinds of posts that get the most engagement:

• Photos (of members, of activities) and videos get the most clicks
• Posts about significant events in members’ lives (anniversaries, awards, etc.) get the most comments (usually congratulations) and reactions.
• Posts that inspire, inform, articulate shared values or feelings also get reactions.
• Posts that are mostly announcements or self-promotions by the organization have little or no engagement, unless they are delivered in an attractive, creative way.
• Links to posts from other Pages or sites get engagement in proportion to how valuable the information is to your followers.

If no one clicks, reacts, shares or comments on a post—it probably was not a good post for your audience.  If very few people engage with a post as compared to other posts, you probably want fewer of these.

All of our posts will not bring high engagement,  but overtime we will learn which types do best and we need to make more posts like those. We want to do that for two reasons:

1. When our posts are engaging to our followers, we are strengthening our relationship with them. That’s a plus.
2. When our posts are not engaging, the Facebook algorithm allows them to reach fewer and fewer people. That’s a minus.

When you are evaluating how well your Facebook page is doing—look at how many of your followers are being reached by your posts and how much engagement they elicit. If the averages of those two numbers are growing, you are doing well. If they are not growing or are declining consistently, you need to upgrade your postings.

Here’s a tip if you want to get more comments: start reacting to the comments either with a comment in reply or by using one of the reaction symbols. When engagement is two-way, it grows.

Finally, when these reactions first became available, I saw other people using them, but didn’t know where they came from. If you are in the same boat, hover over the Like button and the whole list will appear as shown here:

 

 

 

 

Are you reacting yet?

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