What’s working on Facebook now? Facebook always seems to be changing, doesn’t it? In this post, I’m going to share 5 practical and easy-to-follow tips to make your Facebook efforts more effective.
How to Get More Post Views and and Social Interaction on Your Facebook Fan Page
Before I get started, I’ll make my confession right now: I don’t claim to be a prolific social media marketer or expert. I picked up these tips by watching a video which was sent to me by the folks at CoSchedule.com. These tips are practical and useful and I hope they stimulate you to action as they have for me. Look, I was so inspired, I’ve made a video, a blog post AND a Facebook post as a result of it!
Facebook Tip #1. POST ONE TIME PER DAY
That’s a relief, isn’t it? One time isn’t too overwhelming. But it's not without challenges. Small Business U provides a free monthly marketing calendar with more than 50 Idea-Starters. It's free. No opt-in required. Find a link on the home page at SmallBusinessU.org.
Facebook Tip #2. POST ON WEEKENDS TOO.
According to the video, they said “Facebook reports 32% higher engagement on Saturday and Sunday” and this makes sense because you figure people have more time to engage the social networks than during work days. I assume this would also be true for holidays. Either way, the recommendation is a 7-day-a-week effort.
Continue to the remaining 5 tips below the video.
Facebook Tip #3. BEST TIMES TO POST: 9am, 1pm, 3pm
These times make sense to me because the typical adult is probably in a bit if a rush getting out the door for work and not spending a great deal of time socializing online in before 9am. Presuming most of us arrive at work right around 9am, this is login time. Then, at 1pm is the first few minutes after we get back from lunch, a good time to check-in. And 3pm, the time our brains are a bit fried, we’re just ready for a little diversion. Sensible. It will do you good to analyse your posts’ statistics over the course of a couple of weeks to see if there’s a measurable difference relative to the time of day you post.
Facebook Tip #4. MIX YOUR OWN CONTENT WITH CURATED (SHARED) CONTENT
Good news…you don’t have to carry the whole load. I’m doing it here in this post-sharing someone else’s content. I learned something which was shared with me and now I’m sharing it with you. Sort of a hybrid, really. I’m adding a little of my own perspective and experience plus a couple of extra tips (the original content had 5 tips. I’ve added 2 to make it 7). There’s nothing wrong with sharing good advice as long as you’re being honest about it. In fact, sharing other people’s stuff and being open about it can get you a lot of traction in our world (a topic for a future post). Jay Baer, founder of Convince and Convert says 75% original content an 25% curated content is the recommended mix.
Facebook Tip #5. IF IT’S NOT STRONG, DON’T POST IT
The message here is: don’t post crap. Don’t get lazy. It’s better NOT to post at all than post junk your fans will ignore. Facebook’s algorithm penalizes weak posts. Of the millions and millions of posts made every day, Facebook robots are made to learn what good content looks like and which sources deliver it best. Good content gets better visibility, weak content gets penalized. Put up too much weak stuff and your Facebook fan page score will drop and you’ll have an uphill battle getting your future posts to rank and appear on the news feed.
Facebook Tip #6: USE VIDEO (or Great Images)
Most of the Facebook posts you see lately are heavy with images or with video. If you want your posts to be seen, use images or video. If you’re reading this post, it’s highly likely you were driven here first by watching a video.
Facebook Tip #7: LINK YOUR TWITTER ACCOUNT TO YOUR FACEBOOK FAN PAGE
In case you didn’t know (and a lot of people don’t), a Twitter account can pull in your Facebook posts. This means you don’t even need to login to Twitter to make a post there! While Twitter is nowhere near the marketing powerhouse Facebook is (for most businesses), there’s no harm in repurposing your content onto the social platform, especially when the process is seamless and automated. So set that up right now if you haven’t already done it!
Social Media Marketing for Best Results
Posts from your Facebook Fan Page need to deliver value in the form of worthy content.
If you want engagement in the form of clicks to your links (taking people back to your website), Likes and Shares, deliver thoughtful content with a purpose in mind.