Creating interactive posts for Facebook is important for boosting engagement on the social media platform. Here’s why.
According to Facebook’s data from Quarter 1 (Q1) of 2022, 83.8% of post views in the United States came from posts that “did not include a link to a source outside of Facebook.”
This means you’re really hurting your engagement rates if you only use Facebook to promote your website and content from your blog and third-party platforms.
So, what kind of content should you add to your social media calendar?
We’ve gathered over a dozen ideas for creating interactive posts on Facebook to boost engagement.
Let’s get into ’em.
19 Ideas for Creating Interactive Posts for Facebook
- Use more videos
- Polls
- Quiz your followers
- Ask a question
- Ask for feedback
- Host a content or giveaway
- Host an Ask Me Anything session
- Create or participate in a challenge
- Share behind the scenes footage
- Share trending topics
- Ask your followers to share something
- Caption this
- Fill in the blank
- Tell a story
- Quote share
- Meme drop
- One has to go
- Let predictive text fill in the rest
- Fun assignments based on followers’ birthdays
1. Use More Videos
Video content far exceeds written and audio content as far as popularity goes, especially on Facebook.
According to Facebook’s own data, 15 out of 20 of the platform’s most-viewed posts in Q1 of 2022 were videos.
By not including more videos in your social media calendar, you’re really hurting your overall success on the platform.
But how long should Facebook videos be?
Facebook actually has recommendations for this.
Episodic web shows, news stories and livestreams should be more than three minutes for best results. Videos between one and three minutes are good as well.
However, all other video content should be less than one minute.
Facebook Stories should be no more than 15 seconds. This is because Stories longer than 15 seconds will be split into two cards.
2. Polls
Polls are fantastic for engagement on social media.
They enable your audience to participate in a topical debate without needing to commit much time to it.
Plus, you may receive a lot more comments than usual if your poll’s results are divisive.
You’ll need to create a Facebook Story through the Facebook app in order to use polls.
Just follow these steps:
- Open your business page in the Facebook app.
- Click Create a Story.
- Click Poll as the type of Story you’d like to create.
Facebook sometimes removes certain post types temporarily to improve them. If you don’t see the poll feature at the moment, chances are it’ll return sometime later.
3. Quiz Your Followers
Turn your page into a trivia game temporarily.
Ask your followers a question (or a few) related to your niche, and have them guess the answer in the comments.
You can even publish a multi-question quiz to a Story.
Here’s a format idea for this purpose:
- Story Card 1: Announce the quiz.
- Card 2: Explain the first rule. Example “Here’s how this works. We ask a question…”
- Card 3: “…and you try to guess the answer before the next Story shows. Pause if you need more time.”
- Card 4: Question 1.
- Card 5: Answer to Question 1.
- End Card: “How many did you get right?”
Add as many additional questions and answers before the end card as you wish.
4. Ask a Question
This one is simple, but it could be one of your most interactive posts for Facebook.
All you need is the right question to ask.
Fortunately, you can use all of the ideas on this list more than once. So, if your first question flops, ask a different kind of question next time.
Here are a few examples for different industries:
- What was the first trick you learned on a skateboard?
- What was your first knitting project?
- What made you want to start gardening?
- How many fish did you catch this year?
5. Ask for Feedback
Check in with your audience on social media every now and then.
Ask for their opinions about anything related to your brand:
- A new product you released
- Your latest blog post
- Your podcast
- The format you use for videos
- Whether or not they’re subscribed to your email list, and what makes them click on an email
Basically, any time metrics for anything related to your business aren’t what you want them to be, don’t discount what your audience has to say about them.
6. Host a Contest or Giveaway
Contests and giveaways are one of the most popular methods brands use to boost engagement on social media.
If the prize is grand enough, your audience will engage with your posts and generate buzz for your brand a lot more than they ever have, all for a chance to win.
It’s important not to get “contest” and “giveaway” confused with one another.
When you host a contest, you challenge your audience to do something, such as share an image for a photo contest. The user with the best results wins.
Giveaways are a lot simpler. All you need to do is pick a winner at random.
SweepWidget is a fantastic tool for hosting contests and giveaways on Facebook.
You can also use something as simple as WooBox to pick a comment at random.
7. Host an Ask Me Anything Session
Ask Me Anything is a quick question-and-answer session you can have with your audience.
It’s called “AMA” on Reddit, but you can host an AMA on just about any platform.
When you create a new post from the desktop version of Facebook, you’ll see an option called “Host a Q&A” when you click the three-dot menu to choose a post type.
It’ll add a card to your post announcing your AMA.
Your followers can then write in questions, which you can answer with a comment.
You can also end Q&A sessions when you’re ready to stop responding to questions.
It’s a fun and engaging way to share your expertise with your audience.
8. Create or Participate in a Challenge
A great way to engage your audience is to have them cheer you on as you take on an exciting but difficult challenge in your niche.
You can even invite them to join you to increase engagement.
For example, writers have NaNoWriMo, which stands for National Novel Writing Month.
This is November in the United States. The challenge is to write 50,000 words of a novel throughout the month of November.
Another example is Inktober. This is a challenge for artists in which they try to complete one ink drawing every day during the month of October.
If there are no challenges in your niche, create one yourself!
Just be sure to share your struggles and accomplishments with your audience along the way.
9. Share Behind the Scenes Footage
This one works for the same reason participating in a challenge works: audiences love personal content.
In the case of behind the scenes footage, they love getting an inside scoop into the way your business operates.
Here are a few ideas for BTS footage:
- Photos from your latest video shoot
- Your workshop where you develop products
- Photos of your office space where you conduct most of your business
- Your storage room if you make physical goods
- Interviews with members of your team who aren’t normally shown
10. Share Trending Topics
According to data collected by Pew Research, 31% of adults in the United States get their news from Facebook. This is more than any other platform.
You can truly become the go-to resource for everything in your industry if you start sharing trending topics and news stories related to your niche on Facebook.
An effective way to do this is by creating videos in the same format media companies like NowThis and The DoDo use.
These companies create short one to three-minute videos with soft background music and text overlays describing news stories.
Of course, you can also experiment with regular text posts, Stories, Reels and videos where you announce trending topics yourself.
11. Ask Your Followers to Share Something
Have you ever seen those prompts on social media that ask users to share something, such as “the 8th photo in your camera roll” or “the last GIF you saved?”
You could do the same but with a twist so it fits your niche.
Here are a few examples from the niches we mentioned in Idea #4:
- Show us the worst skateboarding wipeout you have on camera.
- Share the current state of your yarn storage area. No tidying up!
- Show us your best and worst plants!
- It’s musky season! Share a pic of your biggest catch.
12. Caption This
This is a popular social media prompt used by influencers, and there’s no reason why you can’t jump on board, either.
It works like this: you post an image and ask your audience to come up with captions for it.
Your followers will then leave comments of their best ideas for captions.
This prompt works best with funny, weird, exciting, stunning and surprising images.
So, the next time you catch something a little humorous or odd on camera, give this prompt a try.
Just remember that whatever image you use should be on brand for best results.
13. Fill in the Blank
This is another popular social media prompt.
All you need to do is present your audience with a phrase that has a missing word (or two). They’ll comment by “filling in the blank” with their own words.
Your prompt can be funny or personal.
We’ll use the same niches to come up with a few examples:
- Fill in the blank: I was _____ years old when I learned how to skateboard.
- Fill in the blanks: I own _____ balls, skeins or spools of yarn but only use _____ .
- Gardening is my _____ . Fill in the blank.
- Fill in the blank: When I get back from a fishing trip, the first thing I do is _____ .
14. Tell a Story
As an industry expert or professional, you probably have a lot of experience with your niche.
As such, you probably have a lot of great stories to tell as well.
Pick a few you don’t mind sharing with your audience, then choose how you want to tell them.
You can use a video that includes images and b-roll footage to accompany your talking portions, or simply use a long text-based post.
If your story is short enough, consider creating a one or multi-card Facebook Story instead.
As you create this post, remember that most great stories are great because of the way they’re told, not what they’re about.
Make your story engaging, and use a mood that matches the tone of the story you’re telling.
15. Quote Share
This is another prompt, and it’s a pretty easy one to set up.
All you need to do is share a quote you like with your audience, then ask them to share a quote of their own.
You can choose what kind of quotes you’d like your audience to share:
- Funny
- Inspiring
- Niche-related
You can create an image to accompany your post or simply create a text post.
Canva is an easy-to-use, web-based graphic design tool that can help you create custom graphics. They even have templates optimized for social media.
16. Meme Drop
Meme drop is a fun and light-hearted social media prompt.
All you do is ask your followers to share, or “drop,” a funny meme image.
Again, it’s best to stay on brand, but do what you feel is best for your audience.
You can even turn this prompt into a challenge by asking your audience to submit original memes they came up with themselves.
17. One Has to Go
A simple prompt that’s nearly impossible to pass up when you come across it.
The “One Has to Go” social media prompt is a simple challenge. You present your audience with a list, and they have to choose one they could do without.
A common use for this prompt is listing popular food items and challenging commenters to choose one they would theoretically give up forever if they had to.
You can easily revamp this prompt for your niche by listing four items related to it and including the prompt “One Has to Go.”
Again, use Canva to create your image. Choose one image to represent each list item, and add text labels if the images aren’t descriptive enough.
18. Let Predictive Text Decide
This is another fun prompt you can repurpose for your niche.
It refers to the “predictive text” feature smartphone keyboards have.
These keyboards remember each keystroke we input into them as well as the words we use.
To make typing more efficient, the smart keyboard lists three words at the top of the UI that change as you type.
They’re predictions of what you may want to type next. The keyboard adds them to your message automatically if you tap on them.
You’re likely familiar with the feature but may be less familiar with the prompt.
The prompt gives you a phrase to enter into your keyboard. You then keep clicking on one of the keyword predictions until a sentence is formed.
It’s almost like FIll in the Blank, only predictive text fills in the blank for you.
Here’s an example for a specific niche: “Enter ‘My main goal with skateboarding is’ into your smartphone’s keyboard, and let predictive text fill in the rest.”
19. Fun Assignments Based On Followers’ Names/Birthdays
Our final idea for making interactive posts for Facebook takes a creative mind, but your followers will love participating in this one.
It’s an assignment for something related to your niche, and you assign them using your followers’ names, birthdays or both.
Here’s an example from the wild. The prompt is “What’s your elf name?”
Assignments are based on a follower’s name and birthday month. Their elf first name is based on the first letter in their real name while their elf last name is based on their birthday month.
So, according to the prompt image, if you’re Tony Stark, your elf name is “Shiny Sugar Socks.”
Use the same methodology to come up with your own prompt and set of assignments related to your niche.
Humor works best here, but get as creative as you want.
Additional Tips On How to Increase Engagement On Facebook
With attention spans getting shorter, one of the easiest ways you can increase engagement on Facebook is by creating shorter posts and videos on the platform.
Save long-form content for your blog, YouTube channel and podcast.
We also know from the data mentioned at the start of this article that posts with links leading outside of Facebook have low engagement rates.
This means you should use Facebook more for generating awareness for your brand and less for promoting content. Use it for online reputation management as well as online reviews.
However, data like this is collected from the broader Facebook user base as a whole.
Your audience may behave differently from that broader audience, so it’s important that you take the time to get to know them and their tendencies.
This will make it easier for you to determine the best ways to keep them engaged.
You should also experiment with different techniques, prompts and post types, and collect your own data along the way.
This will help you make the best decisions with your social media calendar going forward.
If you need more help with your Facebook business page, check out a few of our other guides:
How to Get More Facebook Recommendations
How to Create the Perfect Link to Ask for Facebook Reviews & Recommendations
How to Run a Facebook Birthday Discount Ad
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