How to create engagement on your facebook posts when you’re a retailer ?

Creating engagement on Facebook is a good way to build customer loyalty and increase
sales. For a point of sale network, Facebook engagement is often an important metric. You
can use it to assess business opportunities for different catchment areas and to keep in
touch with local communities.

Why create engagement on Facebook posts is important?

Facebook, like all social media, runs on a selection algorithm. Generally speaking, it skims content according to what it considers relevant to your profile.

Because of this, the interaction rate on Facebook is important, otherwise your carefully crafted audience may never see your posts (at least not naturally).

Are there other benefits to creating engagement on Facebook posts ?

There are! Here are just 3 of the important benefits:

• You can identify your loyal fans more easily. If your page meets certain criteria, you can benefit from the Facebook “Superfans” identification, otherwise, keep an eye out for names that regularly leave comments… Why not involve them in one of your campaigns or offer a prize? All it takes is a private message. It’s laborious, but it works.
• Improve the sense of belonging. The more visibly active your community is, the more close-knit it becomes.
• Work on your e-reputation. A positive reputation makes it easier to collaborate with influencers.

Why invest time in Facebook in particular?

This is essential for brands. Facebook is still the first instinct of local merchants. It is the ultimate place for both proximity and real sales.

Moreover, Marc Zuckerberg has wanted to turn the platform into a marketplace for several years. For example, 76% of people who have already made a purchase on social networks have done so from Facebook. (Blog du Modérateur – 2020).

Finally, Facebook still has 46.3 million active users. (Digimind, 2022). It is therefore an essential asset for community management.

What is a good engagement rate on Facebook?

Obviously a trick question! The average engagement rate depends on your sector AND your fan base. However, we wouldn’t want to leave you empty-handed, so here are some useful figures (Digimind, 2021).

• 3.39%: engagement rate of a Facebook post (any type)
• 8.21%: engagement rate for a Facebook post with under 10,000 fans.
• 2.19%: engagement rate for a Facebook post with over 10,000 fans.

Overall, anything between 3 and 6% can be considered a good result, between 7 and 10% a very good result, and over 10% would be an excellent outcome. Although it’s worth noting that social network engagement statistics have shown a tendency to fall in recent months, including Facebook.

Notable changes to Facebook’s algorithmn

Be careful of overly enticing headlines, which are sanctioned by Facebook’s algorithm.

• Connections between users are preferred as this means there is less space for companies.
• The algorithm values reliable, local and relevant information.
• The scope of business pages is reduced. Businesses must focus on quality.
• Video and image content have a greater reach.
• Facebook boosts the reach of videos, especially live ones.
• Comments have more weight than other interactions

Creating Facebook engagement for a point of sale network

An effective social media strategy requires vision, tools, collaboration and organisation. When it comes to deploying a marketing strategy across a point of sale network, disparate levels of digital maturity can pose a real problem.

Here are a number of tips that we apply with our clients:

• Substitute tasks related to specific skills (eg graphic design) – customisation is better from a pre-approved, provided template.
• Establish a clear and shared editorial time frame and set the pace. 
• Provide a guide with Do’s and Don’ts or even offer Facebook training.
• Test out and establish some posting and publishing guidelines, even if it means taking over certain outlets and doing it for them (centrally and automatically, of course)
• Share advice and concrete results to encourage your network to play the game (encourage sharing, liking, etc.)
• Introduce a system for approving posts whereby you are notified when those local outlets authorised to make posts wish to do so.
• Create the conversation around your network so your local managers can interact with each other and share their challenges and accomplishments…

Tips & Advice: When to post, what to post…

Before jumping into content marketing, take a look at the basics: what to post and when to post it. Virality is also in the details.

OK… we did it for you: (source sproutsocial, 2021)

Days to post: Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday are best, but weekdays generally work well too.  Publication times: 9am to 11am – note that this is an average time slot; we’ll see later in article, for example, that 7am is a good time for Carrefour to post.

It is difficult to say exactly how frequently a business should post. For example, before 2015, it was common to post content on Facebook several times a day. This is sometimes the case today – this very interesting article says posting 5 contents a day seems to be the most optimal.

So, yes! 5 posts a day seems a lot! But the article also states that the engagement ratio per post is better if the company publishes less than once a day.  There’s definitely enough content on the internet and social networks to go round, so focus on quality rather than quantity.

Here are a few models to try out based on the numbers above:

• 1 post every weekday.
• 4 posts a week but not at weekends
• 2 posts, one at 9am and one at 1pm, every Tuesday and Friday

Then you can do an anecdotal analysis of the reach of the posts, look at the KPIs… so your content evolves into good practice for your target audience.

Additional tips for your content marketing

• Media content and question posts are among the most shared. They are the most engaging.
• Visual content is the most popular.
• It’s better to be concise: 2 lines of text is all you need.
• Showcase the product, highlight what you are selling.
• Humour is a good way to improve engagement.

How can you increase your engagement rate?

It’s not always easy to see room for improvement when you have your head in the sand. When it comes to increasing engagement, there are several solutions: 

• Check the basics. The ABCs of optimising engagement. Do you stick to whatever brings the best results statistically speaking?
• Reporting. The best post of the month, the worst, the one with average engagement… find out what works. 
• Trends. Liveshopping, competitions, new collaborations, infographics… have you offered all these content types to your followers?
• “Human” posts. Overview of your teams, your shop, a particular role in the company…
• Creative content. Do content ideas ever run out? Talk to local managers
• What questions do customers often ask? What amuses them? – and create quality content 
• Ask your audience. They know better than us what they like. Identify the content they like and rework your editorial line.

Whatever your approach, producing content is only useful when it’s actually interesting. That’s the secret to building a community. Your image and your storytelling will also come into play, of course.

Example of a good post and retail success

How can you make your Facebook page stand out? How can you generate engagement? Sometimes there’s no point reinventing the wheel: look at your competitors, pick up ideas from outside your sector and enrich your content strategy.

Focus on what can generate interaction and increase engagement.

Here’s a look at some of Carrefour’s best posts (by the network HQ)

• Competitions are an engaging form of content, especially if an ambassador is part of the loop.
• Human publications, a “traditional” way of sharing on social networks.
• Videos are an appealing, dynamic and lively way to share content and generate interaction

Note that in these 3 examples, the posts were published in the morning.

Some of the best posts from a local Carrefour branch

• One of the most successful posts (by Carrefour in Aix-en-Provence, France) includes photos taken in the shop itself, a reference to locality, to real life.
• Competitions… Well, let’s not dwell on them too much, they’re a bit of a Community Manager classic.
• Publications with a local touch – Internet users like posts that are relatable and imperfect, for example humorous posts or content about your branch or your team…

Note that in these examples, posts from the network’s HQ are not very successful on local pages. This means that local content, despite – or perhaps because of – its imperfect nature has a better chance of increasing the community and attracting attention.

Conclusion: Creating engagement on Facebook with your brand content

Over the course of this article, we’ve looked at various types of content and looked at what makes engaging content. 

We have looked at the basics you need to incorporate into your editorial strategy such as time, day and best practice as well as some details specific to Facebook.

As social media marketing is evolving, what will really differentiate you and your brand from your competitors are your image and your ability to be agile.

By posting content, you are saying something about your brand. So make sure your content curation is true to who you want to be. 

And what about you? How does social media fit into your brand? We’d love to see how you optimise and implement simple and effective processes for your local digital marketing.