Facebook Messenger Live Chat Plugin Is Now Available For Your Website

Welcome to our Facebook page growth and engagement study for the month of November.

We look at the latest content trends on the platform and we also report about all the new features that you should be aware of.

All this to help you run better campaigns on the platform. Let’s get started.

A decrease in reach brings the engagement boost

Page likes growth at 0.09% of the total audience. This is the same growth rate that we saw in the month of October too. 15.45% of all pages used Facebook advertising during the month. They paid for 38.34% of their total reach.

The average post reach was at 7.79% of the audience. The average reach has seen a 5% drop compared to the previous month. Videos reached 8.81%, links 8.23%, photos 7.22% and status updates 5.71%.

The average post engagement rate was at 5.24% of people reached. This is a 5.22% increase compared to the engagement rate in October. Videos engaged 6.11%, photos 5.15%, links 4.25% and status updates 4.18%.

Facebook Messenger live chat for websites

Facebook is entering the world of Intercom and other live chat providers. Facebook Messenger Customer Chat plugin is now available for businesses to install on their websites and allow their visitors to contact them and chat.

This can turn out to be a great sales or customer support platform for brands. And with the availability of Facebook Messenger bots it can also be made smarter and more efficient with automation. Plus Facebook allows you to reach out to the people who have been in touch with you on Messenger or the live chat using Facebook advertising. The company is currently testing the Messenger Broadcast feature which will make this mass communication using Messenger easier in the future.

There are more than a billion Messenger users and the plugin is cross platform so it works just as well on the web as on the mobile and the chat session can continue from the website to the Messenger app itself.

Another benefit to the Facebook Messenger compared to the other live chat providers is the fact that it is free to use and should stay so.

Facebook and Messenger stories unite

Facebook hasn’t been as successful with the stories feature on Facebook itself as it has been on Instagram. Still, the company is not giving up. It’s streamlining and simplifying the offering in order to try and boost the usage. The stories that you post on Facebook and on Messenger itself will now be visible on both platforms giving them extra amplification. Messenger on its own has more than 300 million daily active Stories users.

And the most useful feature for all the social media managers is that fact that you can now post your story on Instagram and share that same story both on your Facebook page and your messenger at the same time using the cross-post to Facebook feature.

Facebook Group stories

These days, a lot of the organic engagement for brands on Facebook happens in the Facebook Groups. If you’re starting today you probably want to create (or join) a group rather than trying to build your own Facebook page.

The Times and the Sunday Times (of London) have experimented with Facebook Groups during the year and have shared some interesting results that show the potential of the platform. 89% of all Group members engage with the group at least once during the month and the quality of engagement is high. Compare this to the poor organic reach and engagement numbers for Facebook pages that we’ve shared earlier in this post.

Facebook also introduced the Stories feature to Groups during the month. Admins get to moderate the story but any member of the group is allowed to contribute to the daily story. Just another feature to make the groups even more sticky and more engaging.

Helping the creators

Facebook has launched the Creators website and app in order to help all the influencers and other power users on the platform manage their social media presence and get better.

The app features a live creative kit for doing Live Broadcasts. It helps you add an intro and an outro to your broadcasts.

It also introduced a unified inbox between Facebook, Facebook Messenger and Instagram. All the messages you get between these three platforms are displayed in one place. It makes it so much easier to stay engaged, do sales or customer support.

The Creators website itself is more on the educational side. It features a lot of content and advice on how to create a better presence and how to grow your profiles.

Facebook wants to be your guide too

Facebook is trying to eat the internet. Events app has been relaunched as “Local” and aims to be your guide to things happening around you including bars and restaurant reviews. There’s a “Discover” tab that shows you top suggestions for things to do and also features recommendations according to what is popular in the area with your friends. Yelp, FourSquare, TripAdvisor and others should be on the lookout.