How to Maximize Facebook Engagement

Wonder why some posts receive so much attention, while others do not? Which Facebook posts specifically drive social engagement? It doesn’t matter how much time you spend on that one post, the post is simply not getting as much attention as you anticipated. Whereas, the silly picture you shared last week went viral. We investigated this by looking at some Pacific Place’s Facebook posts. We took time to analyze which types of posts receive more likes, comments, and shares than other posts receive. Here are our findings:

Pictures Play On Emotions:  

Humans are visual animals. Our eyes are designed to naturally focus is on colors and shapes, not exactly black and white text. But just posting pictures doesn’t mean that you’ll gain “likes” or “comments.” Here are key examples of the popular types of pictures that our fans have engaged with:

• Cupcakes!!

Literally. An overwhelming number of social media posts about our beloved friend, Trophy Cupcakes, received an average of 36 “likes” per post. Not only does this mathematically prove that cupcakes rock, it also shows the importance of leveraging on people’s all-time favorite brands to generate more likes and comments. These posts were accompanied by pictures of the most scrumptious looking baked goods we’ve ever seen!

(Birthday cupcake made especially for Pacific Place’s pop up shop! Source: Facebook)

• Long live the Seahawks

If there is something that can touch the hearts of true Seattelites, it’s the Seattle Seahawks. Despite their defeat this past January, Seahawks fans are still amazingly loyal, and passionate about the Emerald City’s pride for the “12th Man”. During the playoffs week, Pacific Place showed support for the Seahawks and acted as a cheerleader from their social media platform, Facebook.

Event-Specific Posts Drive Engagement:

Posts about popular events such as Fashion’s Night Out, Seafair, Fourth of July, and Bumbershoot generated a tremendous amount of engagement. Event-specific posts are great because they’re easy to respond to, and are not narrowed down to just Pacific Place.

The Hidden Card – The Simple Status Update:

You probably did not see this one coming. Yes, text, just plain text with no links or visuals! Numerous social media experts have emphasized the importance of including links, pictures, videos, making the post as engaging as possible, and avoid leaving posts with none of the above. While it is true that posts with visually creative content are far more interesting, Facebook’s “Unfriendly New Algorithm” states otherwise. The new algorithms have shown that, since fall 2012, posts with pictures, videos, or links reached far less people than they did before, while plain content-less posts reached 20% more fans.

Pacific Place still managed to keep their simple status updates fun and interesting by sharing a fashionable quote from a favorite designer, or updating quick news for their engaged audience.

As shown by this case, maybe keeping it simple is the way to go.