Social media marketing is expected to grow exponentially over the next several years, but Facebook will likely remain one of the biggest and best platforms for connecting with your audience. If you’re in the beginning stages of launching a Facebook page for your brand or you aren’t seeing the engagement you were hoping for, here are some possible explanations for your audience’s lack of interest:

You Only Post Marketing Messages

Put yourself in the consumer’s shoes: do you want a bunch of obnoxious marketing messages compelling you to “BUY NOW!!” clogging your personal feed all the time? Of course not! You would probably unfollow or un-like the page to avoid seeing their posts if they only ever post about the latest product or service they desperately want their followers to purchase. Instead, aim for a balanced mix of product/service announcements and fun, engaging posts that focus on the consumer, not what you have to offer.

Your Posts Are Irrelevant

You may be good at posting funny images, interacting with followers, and toning down the hyped up sales pitches in your posts, but if the images aren’t closely related to your brand, then your followers are more likely to ditch your page. Sure, you may think that image was too funny not to share, but your audience members are primarily following your page because they’re interested in what your brand has to offer. While you shouldn’t only focus on this aspect, you shouldn’t go too far with being funny or popular if the content you publish has little to nothing to do with your brand, products or services.

Your Posting Schedule is Erratic

This goes one of two ways: either you post so infrequently that followers forget your page exists, or you post so often that you annoy your followers to the brink of abandoning your page altogether. 1-2 posts per day is considered a good general guideline for Facebook pages, but you also shouldn’t post just for the sake of posting. If you’re out of ideas for content one day, then don’t post! Your followers won’t notice if you miss a day here and there, but you still want to remain on their radar so you can present them with new products/services or special deals in the future.

You Never Post Images

It’s all about visual content these days. Facebook users have so many friends and brand pages vying for their attention in their Facebook feeds that you can’t afford to be boring. If you don’t stand out with high-quality content and excellent imagery, your post may go unnoticed as users scroll through their feeds. To mitigate this, you’ll need to find good quality images (or even ask your followers to share their images of your product/service) and combine visuals with well-written, compelling text.

You Haven’t Tried Paid Advertising

Organic advertising is a great option, but it shouldn’t be your only option. Unless you have an SEO pro who’s a wizard at directing Facebook users to your page from external websites, your blog or the Facebook search engine itself, you should try out Facebook’s paid advertising options to see how they can generate more traffic and engagement on your page. You can choose to boost posts, create web click campaigns or simply create posts that encourage users to “like” your page – try a variety of campaigns to see which one works best for your Facebook page.