Penny (not her real name) was the owner of a children’s business. She had 10 000 fans on her Facebook page but low organic engagement. With that many fans she expected to at least get some likes and comments on her page, but no.

Penny had tried ads to increase her sales numbers and to engage more of her audience, but it didn’t work. All she did was make Facebook richer and increase the costs of her business. Not what she needed or expected for her business.

Penny’s business wasn’t new. It had a solid client base and was well regarded in the marketplace. She had good like numbers. She ticked all the boxes of what most people would expect for a successful business but her social media was letting her down. She needed her social media to gain new clients and to engage existing clients for new products and services.

How we increased the organic Facebook engagement

There were four main problems to fix to ensure we had high engaging organic Facebook content. There was the most common mistake I find business owners make, so don’t feel bad if you are doing the same. Then there was meeting the three key scientifically proven parts to engaging social media. Finally, I sprinkled some neuroscience magic over it all to seal the relationship with the new fans.

Customer neuromarketing assessment

Too often, businesses forget that it’s a person they are connecting with online. That means that we need to understand and appeal to what engages the audience. When it comes to business, even a competitors’ audience can have a slightly different psychological approach needed to engage an audience.

Previous research shows that to have highly engaging content you need to appeal to the self-image of the audience. What I did with Penny was a comprehensive psychological profiling of her audience to ensure that when we used a neuromarketing approach to her content, we were delivering highly effective posts.

Once the profiling was complete, I was able to develop a social media content calendar to meet the various marketing objectives.

 

Timing of content to increase organic engagement

Posting at the wrong time is the most common error businesses make with their organic content. While you may see various infographics touting “the best time” to post online, the best time is actually found in your Facebook Page Insights.

In Australia, Yellow have previously produced reports detailing when the various age brackets of the Australian population are online. If your page is new and has limited Insights, or if you’ve previously bought fans, or you’re trying to target a different audience, I strongly suggest reading the findings of their reports.

In Penny’s case, I took the various content types we’d uncovered in the psychological profiling and scheduled the content accordingly. Doing it this way meant that we were appealing to the differing audience behaviours through the day and providing them with relevant and engaging content to match these times. (Perfectly in line with what Facebook wants for the platform)

Organic content planning

I have to admit, until recently I never planned out my content. I was the kind of person who scheduled from one week to the next but it never aligned with my strategic business objectives.

For Penny, we planned out content to meet the strategic objectives of the business, to incorporate lead times, and to promote community involvement and thereby appealing to the core audience psychology and the scientific principles of engaging content.

Organic Engagement on Facebook posts

The final piece was to trigger the audience’s neurochemicals and to create a stronger bond between the audience and the brand.

By engaging with the audience on the page’s content, I was able to use my understanding of how our brain works when using social media to improve the relationship and feeling of the audience towards the company.

A client who feels closer and more aligned with a brand, the result of these neurochemicals, is more likely to buy from that company.

 

 

Result

So what was the result of the neuromarketing assessment, content plan, scheduling and organic engagement?

When most pages have reach and engagement of between 2 – 5%, Penny’s page had the following:

Minimum average post reach by follower – 20%
Median average post reach by follower – 60%
Minimum average post engagement by follower – 76%
Median average post engagement by follower – 110%

Of course, there were posts that “went viral” and totally blew the numbers up. But to be honest, I never aim for viral posts because, where do you go from there?

I’d like to say that Penny is still with me; like many of my clients, I get them to a great place and they take their social media in house. I can tell you that she is not following the strategy or the neuromarketing we did. If only she’d done my course, she would have had all the skills at her fingertips (or her staff’s).

I can tell you that I achieve the same results regardless of the industry. I’ve got tradies to beauticians booked out for a month in advance with the same techniques. The beauty is that I can consult and train your staff, or you can learn the skills to use in your own business (or even start up your own social media agency) just reach out for more information or with any questions.

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