Social media is a very passive thing for many people but for those of us that use it as a business marketing tool it holds far greater importance. You might not even know that how you interact on social media even matters or that it can help or hurt a page. How you interact on social media matters!

For those of us that took that big leap into starting a business of our own and then another leap into using social media to grow our business, this is a big deal. To be fair, most of us probably have a love/hate relationship with it because we love seeing you here, but we also know it takes a lot of time to make these pages work.

The biggest factor that determines if we are posting to crickets or posting to our ideal audience is your interaction here. It is one thing to read our posts and, in your head, “like” what we are putting out there. It might even motivate you to reach out and call us to set up an appointment. Don’t get me wrong, that is a good thing! BUT, it’s not really a good thing for helping our page be seen on yours or anyone else’s news feed. Sounds so wrong but it is the way the algorithm and all those cyber gnomes work.

So, what’s the message? For our business pages what we are really looking for are the people who are our ideal target market. The people that could potentially be our client or customer. It is so encouraging to see the numbers of “likes” and “followers” grow but if there is no engagement between you and our posts then it actually hurts the amount of people who will ever see our pages.

How You React Holds Weight

@Rachelle Miller shared how what we do to interact can help a page and they are ranked from least impact to biggest impact.

• 1^st– When you are scrolling through the news feed and you stop. Facebook monitors that. They know how long you spent looking at the post without doing anything else.
• 2^nd– How do you react to the post? Do you quickly click on “Like” or one of the other emoticons? These are called “micro engagements” because they are quick and easy but they did get a response from you.
• 3^rd– Fast comment. These are 3-5 words such as “I totally agree” or “ I need to try this!” Again, another response but with a little more engagement.
• 4^th– Share the content. This sends a message to Facebook that you find value in the post and that is exactly what they are wanting from us when we post- to provide something worthwhile.
• 5^th– Long comment or with a tag. This would be 5 or more words that give more of a thoughtful answer. If you tag someone in the message that is showing that you find the content valuable to someone else.

The 3-E’s

In the end we are all hoping to provide you with valuable content that will educate and entertain you but also engage you. Facebook wants nothing more than for us to create relationships with our readers through our posts. If you follow a business page and spend some of your valuable time to read our posts, please help the business by engaging to show your support and to keep the conversation going.