Written by ContentPowered.com
Modern Facebook marketing is all about two things: Reach and Engagement. They feed back into each other. More engagement means more reach. More reach means more opportunity for more engagement. When a positive feedback loop is created, your content goes viral and your popularity explodes. Every post made by a marketer on Facebook is an attempt, subtle or overt, to spark this loop.
I’m fond of using this analogy, but you can treat “going viral” the same way you might think of a thunderstorm and getting struck by lightning. You can’t control the weather. You can’t control when or where lightning strikes. You can, however, make sure you’re outside in the storm, holding a long metal pole, on the roof. Stack the deck in your favor by using the right kinds of posts to encourage maximum reach and engagement.
If you know much about Facebook’s EdgeRank, you’ll know that different types of posts have different weights. The common question, then, is “which post type has the best reach?” Unfortunately, it’s not so simple to answer. A video might naturally have more reach than a text post, but a text post with a lot of engagement will have a higher reach than a video with no engagement. Promoting posts also throws a wrench into the calculations.
Instead of asking which specific type of post is the best – and thus pigeonholing yourself into a corner using the same post over and over – you should figure out what works best to gain reach on any post, so all of your posts have as much reach as possible.
With that in mind, here are the ways you can make your posts better.
Use Links Whenever Possible, With Exceptions
Okay, so I lied a bit when I said there’s no one perfect type of post. On Facebook, more often than not, the best type of post is going to be a link. There’s a reason for that, though; people like links. They like viewing content, and they expect that content to be on a site other than Facebook. After all, no one wants to read a blog post done through Facebook’s notes system.
That means you need to use links whenever you post content. Even when you post images or videos, you should include links to supplemental material, using the multimedia as the hook.
Videos are the one possible exception to this. Facebook has been putting a lot of effort into video over the past year, and they’ve made it so that posting a video natively on Facebook works much better than linking to the same video on YouTube. You can still include a link in the description of the video, but you should probably avoid linking directly to the video instead of uploading it.
It’s often a good idea, now, to upload the video to both YouTube and Facebook. When posting it on Facebook, use and link to the Facebook version. For embedding the video in your blog or sharing it on other social networks, use the YouTube link.
Keep Copy Short, Outside of Text Posts
Twitter may have a hard limit of 140 characters on posts, but Facebook works best with half of that. Studies have shown that posts under 70 characters long have the most reach and engagement.
Why is this? Chances are it’s because users don’t want to be burdened by lengthy Facebook posts. They’re clicking your link, they don’t care about the copy, unless that copy is short and quick enough to catch their attention.
There’s also the issue with the truncation and “read more” button that appears on longer content. You can assume that anything under the cut, so to speak, is going to be completely ignored.
Keep your Topics Newsworthy
Picking the right newsworthy topics is a huge factor as well. Users want something interesting. You know what’s not interesting? Yesterday’s news. If you’re getting your content ideas from Facebook’s trending box, that’s fine. If you’re plugging those ideas into a six-week turnaround on post creation, you’re way behind everyone else. Items trend because they’re important now, not because they’ll be important in a few days.
Post Frequently and Consistently
One of the primary factors in Facebook’s algorithm is constant engagement. In order to achieve constant engagement, you need to post frequently. After all, users can’t engage with posts they don’t see. The problem is that, if you’re relying on your own content, you’ll quickly run out of both user interest and content itself. Therefore:
Curate Interesting Content
Content curation is the solution to that problem. When you curate content, you’re turning yourself into an industry resource, a hub for discussion and a place users can go to see the goings-on in your business. How can you effectively curate content?
- Find content that supplements your best existing content to keep users interested.
- Vary the type of content you post, including images, videos, posts, books, podcasts and guides.
- Curate content from a broad range of sources, as long as they’re reputable. Curating from 1-2 sites over and over makes you look like an affiliate.
- Add your own twist to the content. Even if all you do is add your own sub-70-character caption, it’s your own persona adding to the discussion.
Work to Encourage Engagement
This one is simple. Want more reach? Boost your engagement. This means asking questions and stirring discussion. It also means keeping that discussion going. When a user comments, respond. When a user thanks you, tell them they’re welcome. Be courteous, uphold discussion, moderate your comments and keep everything nice and engaged.
Target Posts Organically
Facebook allows you to use many of its deep ad targeting factors, including demographics and interests, on individual posts without having to pay for promotion. This can be useful both to split-test similar posts and to attract the attention of certain subsets of your users. Always be testing, always be targeting, always be succeeding.
Use Original Photos
Images can be very engaging, but they need to be original. Facebook users tire of the same old viral images very quickly. Make or take your own images, don’t steal or use stock pictures whenever possible. Add text and effects to make an image your own, and tie it in to your ongoing storytelling.