10 Tips to Make Your Facebook Updates More Interesting

Facebook is a great way to keep in touch with friends, family, and acquaintances who are scattered all over the world or who you may not see very often. However, reading boring and repetitive status updates can get weary. Everyone wants to learn new techniques to draw attention to their status updates, engage their readers, and get a lot of likes. Here are ten tips to make your Facebook status updates more interesting:

1. Be witty about what you write.

Find a clever, interesting way to express common, everyday tasks. Being witty makes friends more interested, even when you post about ordinary parts of your day. Try writing a bit of poetry about a common occurrence. A haiku about drinking a can of soda makes an ordinary experience come alive. Or you can try not explaining every detail about something and making it a mystery. A little intrigue will catch your friends attention and encourage comments to get you to solve it for them, if they haven’t already guessed themselves.

2. Write about the exciting things you do.

Don’t just talk about work, post about a new hobby. Topics of recent interest to my friends include going hang gliding, training as a 5k runner, performing a first gig as a musician, posting pictures of the incredible piece of artwork one friend just completed, or finding out about a new hobby you know other friends take part in that interest you. Friends want to support you in your new hobbies and endeavors, so posting about these new activities allow your friends to live vicariously through you and allow other to help motivate and support you when you need a little nudge to keep going.

3. Keep your updates short and interesting.

Long diatribes usually get glossed over because most people don’t have the time to read them. A couple catchy lines will attract more attention than a post where they have to open another window to read it all.

4. Include pictures, links, or videos.

By including items to illustrate your updates, people can more readily see what you are up to. Been on vacation and posting about it? Include some of your best vacation pictures. Talking about a song you love? Add a YouTube link to the song so others can enjoy it with you. Has a specific news story caught your eye? Include links to the stories that affect you so others can see exactly what you are talking about and form their own opinion. Interested in a new cause or charity? Post the link to the website; maybe others will check it out and become supporters also. Posting extra information helps engage the reader and gives them a chance to learn about things that are important to you.

5. Keep it positive, for the most part.

No one wants to read about your boring life or depressing thoughts day after day. Although an occasional update about something sad is appropriate, doing it all the time can be frustrating on your friends and make them want to skip your updates, or worse, unfriend you.

6. Post jokes or interesting quotations.

If you heard a joke that made you laugh, others will too. Just make sure the jokes translates to written form. If you have an interesting quote, especially if it appears relevant to your life, post it, with or without an explanation. Without can be fun, as people will try to engage you to see what it means. Just make sure to give credit where it is due.

7. Ask questions.

Look for opinions about a topic, even if it’s just what movie you should watch tonight. Good questions can spark interesting conversations with your friends, and maybe you can learn a thing or two. Remember, a two-way exchange is what true communication is all about, and your status updates can facilitate this exchange if you ask the right questions.

8. Post a fill in the blank.

Good examples include “The best day of my life was ______,”or “If I could make one change to my life, it would be ________.” Encourage people to answer. It is a great way to learn about your friends and engage others in your posts. Also, it’s a good idea, after some conversation, to answer the question for yourself. People will be curious about how you respond to your own posts.

9. Add symbols.

Beyond the simple smiley face, you can add many different symbols to your Facebook posts. Ever wonder how people post symbols, such as hearts, king’s crowns, musical notes, a peace sign, or others? Search the net for Facebook symbols and you will find many websites with instructions on how to add special emoticons to your updates. One good website is fsymbols.com, but many more sites exist. On a similar vein, add ASCII art to status updates. There are many examples of ASCII art on the internet that are available for use. They are beautiful, interesting, and tend to pique people’s interests enough to like and comment.

10. Don’t update too much.

Some people constantly share photos, post status updates, and bombard the newsfeed with more posts than most people can keep track of. This can become tedious to plod through and can guarantee people don’t want to check you out next time. For example, don’t share every funny post from George Takei; most people have seen them before anyway. Occasional, interesting and fun updates keep your friends wanting more and coming back.

By following these ten steps, you can increase the interests in your status updates and keep your friends checking your page to see what you have to say. And remember, respond to comments people make to your posts. Continuing to engage your friends after posting your initial status update will keep the conversation going and the fun and interest of Facebook continuing for a long time. Facebook is best when used as a two-way communication device. Besides, isn’t that what being friends is all about?