If your business is thinking about trying to increase brand awareness on Facebook, you probably have one, unavoidable underlying question:  What works?

After all, Facebook is a social media platform, the emphasis being on social.   The key is to create content people will respond to, and not just in their heads.  They need to react to, share or engage with your content so Facebook’s algorithms track that people enjoyed the post.  Facebook uses that data to determine what to rank on people’s news feeds.

When your posts get more reactions, they spread across news feeds with higher ranking.  Also, when posts from your page get more reactions, future posts will rank better because Facebook judges that people like this content and will want more of it.

What we know is that content which is promotional doesn’t fare well on Facebook.  It’s like going to a party and starting conversations with your sales pitch.

It needs to be social.  Fun, entertaining, provocative, weird, surprising, touching… you’re looking for an emotional response to these posts.

What works for your business depends on the voice you develop and the audience you want to reach.  Below are some posts we did through our social media management services that got strong reactions.

You can see by their content that they have a human touch element, with no direct message about business services at all.

Call Them Hallmark Cards

We do a lot of Facebook posts that have an inspirational, even sentimental message.  As a business, your first thought is that this content is trite or saccharine, but they have the light touch that tends to get reactions on Facebook.

This hits on a sentiment that’s near and dear to the target audience, which is usually more effective that just a general, positive sentiment.

Hit On a Date

Everything from important dates to things like National Hot Dog Day hook people’s interest.  Here we have a young singer doing a patriotic rendition on the anniversary of 9/11:

This was a natural on National Flower Day:

A once in a lifetime event gets everyone’s attention:

Let’s not forget Shark Week:

Peak My Interest

Asking questions and asking for direct action is a great way to get people to react:

These is just a taste of the types of posts you can put out to build brand awareness for your business.

The name of the game is reactions.  Most often, the message you create will only incidentally connect to your business offer.  The goal is not direct response (you can use Facebook Lead Ads for that), but rather to tap into Facebook’s vast audience to get your brand in front of more potential customers.