Updated Tips on Facebook Engagement

At the LinkedOC event with Amy Porterfield, I learned what is currently working for her to get customers engaged on Facebook. She recommends short posts of 80 characters or less. Twitter limits you to 140 characters, so basically, less is more with any of your social media posts. This blog post is going to cover some new best practices for Facebook profiles and pages.

Status Updates: Questions are good, but make them quick and easy to answer. My friend, Judy Kucharuk does a good job of this with her “question of the day”, which, by the way, she posts on her personal profile and not a business page. Many people answer her questions and so they get a lot of traction in the news feeds of her friends. Don’t be afraid to ask silly off-topic questions once in awhile on your business page as well. You don’t want to stray too far from the subject matter of your expertise, but you also want to seem like a real person who genuinely wants to know your audience better.

Facebook profiles are a great place for engagement. Don’t forget to provide useful information. I had started a Facebook group called “IndustryFriends” just so I would have a place where I could post meetings industry content in a place where everyone who saw it would benefit from it (as opposed to posting that type of content in my status updates where all my friends and family would see it). The group is now a thriving community where many people actively help each other with questions or problems they are facing.

Business Pages: You might want to try a program like Crowdbooster to help you determine when your audience is online and on Facebook. The number of times in a day that you should post is tricky. You want to make sure you are posting 2-5 times per day, however people will unlike you if they see you in their news feed too much. This is the reason for Facebook’s algorithm, Edgerank. Your posts won’t make it into your fans’ news feeds if they don’t get likes and comments.

I had been using HootSuite to post articles to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn at the same time and had noticed I was not getting a lot of engagement from my fans. There have been studies on both sides of this issue; however, I am going to try to post directly to each of these platforms for awhile to see if I get an increase in engagement.

404 x 404 pixel graphic posts for the new Facebook timeline are best! Photos or photos with text are the most viewed content so if you can find a way to say something in a graphic way, you should do it. Also, use subtle calls to action in your posts: “like”, “comment” and “share”. If you have a blog where you want to drive traffic, create a two minute video teaser to lead them to the blog.

Have you noticed any changes in the types of posts that show up in your news feed? What have you done that works for you?