Thanks to a rollout of new changes, Facebook’s average organic post reach has declined. That means new implications for you and your business. Now, more than ever, you need to make sure you are getting the most from each of your Facebook posts.
Fortunately, we have a few tips that can help you deal with these new changes.
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1. The Golden Rule of Social Media
First thing’s first, the golden rule of social media is: short is sweet. Now, Facebook doesn’t have the character limit like Twitter, but you shouldn’t turn your post into a novel. You have to get your point across as effectively as possible in the short amount of time that people are scrolling through their newsfeed.
BlitzLocal compiled and reported interesting trends from 120 billion Facebook impressions.
For now, we’ll focus on their findings on post length:
Based on their statistics, interactions are generally driven by posts with 100 to 119 characters. It’s also of note that questions perform better than non-question posts, but more on that later.
In addition, the fifth line of text is the cutoff for where posts get truncated, and the dreaded “see more” tag comes into play. It’s enough to ask people to click your link or call-to-action. Don’t ask your audience to take an extra step and click “see more” beforehand.
Using short links, concise wording, and images are good habits to have when posting.
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2. Visual Content Improves Post Engagement
A picture is worth a thousand words! Don’t fret over limited characters in your posts, include a picture to help communicate or illustrate your point. Not only will you more effectively grab viewers’ attention, but you’ll also increase post engagement.
Check out the chart below from a HubSpot survey of over 1500 companies:
Those percentages mean more now than ever since Facebook’s algorithm has changed to heavily weight post engagement as a means to maintain newsfeed reach. Think about the dollars you can save in paid advertisements and promoted posts by people putting in their two cents. I think you get the picture (pun intended).
Let’s face it, not everyone has an inner desire to be an art critic. So you might be wondering how some stock photo will drive people to comment.
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3. Video game worthy combo moves.
Remember BlitzLocal’s data chart indicating that posts asking a question have a higher performance? HubSpot also did a report on question posts from the top 10,000 Facebook pages based on likes, and took it one step further:
So you see, question posts do drive more comments. More specifically, close ended question posts that begin with “should”, “would”, and “which” perform the highest. If you couple these questions with a photo related to what’s being asked, you’re casually inviting your audience to provide their valuable input on a product. This will help keep your posts in your audience’s newsfeed rotation.
However, this shouldn’t mean that every single post from now on should be a “would you rather . . . ?” question with an accompanying image. Keep a good mix of informative and entertaining posts as well. But keeping short post lengths and attaching pictures are always good habits to live by.
What people pay attention to may change, but their attention span stays consistent.
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4. Post when people are online.
Now, let’s look at the best times to post on Facebook. Buddy Media conducted a study based on 200 of its clients, illustrating best practices for Facebook Pages looking to increase their fan base’s engagement. The key takeaway was that across all industries posts on Thursdays see the most engagement.
You can easily tell from the chart that Thursday and Friday are the best days to post from an engagement standpoint.
As Buddy Media puts it, “the less people want to be at work, the more they will be on Facebook.”
Social media is constantly changing, and Facebook is no exception. To become a master marketer you have to be able to not only master the platform as it is now, but adapt to any new changes. With these 4 tips you are well on your way to mastering Facebook for your business.
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