How to grab attention on Facebook

This week we’re looking at how you can grab attention on Facebook.

Facebook has billions and billions of users so, unless your customer base is ‘people who hate Facebook’, you’re pretty much guaranteed to find your customers on there.

On the other hand, Facebook’s busy nature means it’s easy for your stuff to get lost in the noise. Especially as people don’t go on Facebook to shop. They go on there to catch up with their friends, vent about their lives, enjoy drama-filled comment threads…all that good stuff.

Your job as a brand is to step into the middle of all that and go “Hey! Stop what you’re doing and check us out! We’re way more interesting than your ex’s last selfie!”

It’s not easy. Even the most social-media savvy brand will struggle to survive the scrolling and get those all-important clicks.

But you can give yourself a fighting chance to grab people’s attention on Facebook with a few simple tricks. Let’s take a look:

Know your audience

This is Marketing 101, so we’ll try not to bore you on this point for too long! But it is worth mentioning, so here goes:

Knowing your audience is vital for getting conversions. The more you know about your audience, the easier it will be to grab their attention. For example, if audience research tells you that your customers love cooking, you can try incorporating some foodie content to pique their interest.

Audience research will also tell you a lot about your audience’s demographics and behaviour. That’s really useful in this case, because Facebook is amazing at getting your content in front of some really specific audiences.

The ‘audiences’ tool in Facebook ads manager helps you to get your content seen by exactly the right people at exactly the right time. It also gives you actionable insights, which will help you to tailor your content even more closely.

Be as specific as you like with Facebook’s audience tools – the platform can handle it! And don’t be afraid to segment your audience (for example, send one campaign out to customers in England and another to customers in Scotland) for even closer personalisation.

Use video to grab attention on Facebook

People like moving pictures. We’re hard-wired by evolution to pay attention to movement (“What is that shaking the tall grass? Is it a predator? Is it something we could eat? Better watch it closely and see what it does!”)

You can hack that ancient hardwiring by using video in your posts. Just make sure that your vids are relevant to what you’re selling – luring someone in with a satisfying clip of (say) popping bubble wrap is great, but it won’t get you more than views if it’s got nothing to do with your actual product.

Think about ways you can use movement and video to showcase your product or get your message across. Oh – and spare a thought for folk who scroll with their Facebook on mute. Make sure your videos work with or without sound.

Provide social proofs

Sorry to break it to you, marketers, but the public are on to you. They know that your job is to make your product look good. They know you’ll do anything to get conversions. And they don’t trust you.

They do trust other Facebook users, though. 

Take advantage of that by bringing those users into your marketing. Post reviews, case-studies, even comments that catch your eye! This kind of social proof isn’t just great for reassuring potential customers that your content is worth it – it’s also a fantastic way of getting your content in front of more eyes.

UGC (User-Generated-Content) is a particularly good way to hack Facebook’s algorithm. Snag Tights are a great example of this. They encourage their customers to take fun, creative pics wearing their products. They then share their favourite pics to their page.

Snag don’t discriminate when it comes to the posts they share – it’s all authentic, genuine customer selfies (no photoshopped thigh gaps on their page!). This is part of what makes their strategy so great – folk feel like they really can trust what they’re seeing.

It works brilliantly for them. As well as showing how great their tights look on ordinary people, they also regularly boost their organic reach from featured users sharing ‘their’ post.

Engage with your audience

Half the game with Facebook advertising is pleasing the algorithm. If you can make the algorithm happy, it will give you privileges. It will show your posts to more people, and even tell them that you are a responsible and responsive brand.

But how can you win the all-powerful algorithm’s favour? Well, let’s stick with Snag for a moment. The algorithm loves Snag. Adores them. Why? Because they engage. There is nothing the algorithm loves more than engagement.

We’ve mentioned Snag’s UGC. That’s an incredible start for engagement. But it goes further than that. If you run through the comments on Snag Tights’ posts, you’ll find comment after comment – and Snag responds to them all. 

They respond in full as well – not just a quick ‘Thanks for your order!’ They have full-on conversations with their customers.

We don’t know how Snag runs their marketing department, but we’d guess that there are at least two people monitoring the social media full-time. They must also have really clear guidelines about how to respond, brand voice, topics to avoid, and so on. It takes a lot of work to make engagement look this natural.

Not every business can dedicate this much time to Facebook – but the more engagement you can encourage, the more the algorithm will like you. And the more the algorithm likes you, the greater your chances of grabbing some eyeballs.

Play the game, get results

If you can grab attention on Facebook, you can win at Facebook marketing. To win at Facebook marketing, you have to play by Facebook’s rules. Use its audience tools to reach the right people. Post UGC and social proofs for that algorithm-pleasing engagement. Draw attention with videos. Give your customers what they want. If you can do all this, you’re in with a fighting chance of winning conversions through Facebook.

If you’re not sure where to start with Facebook, check out one of our other blog posts – “Build your brand on Facebook.