6 Tips to Improve Your Facebook Posts

By Ishita Ganguly
Published September 9, 2015

Are you marketing on Facebook?

Do you want better reach for your Facebook posts?

Using the right posting tactics will give you better results from your Facebook marketing.

In this article you'll discover six tips for more effective Facebook posts.

Discover six tips to improve Facebook posts.

Many businesses start posting on Facebook without a plan. As a result, their posts often don't address the needs of their audience.

Consider creating a road map for your posts covering various topics.

For example, if you're in the fitness industry, your content could cover fitness tips, blog marketing, healthy recipes and so on. The more topics you add to your content bucket, the more variety you can offer to your audience.

Decide what topics you'll cover on your Facebook page.

After you choose the topics you'll cover, create a calendar. A content calendar maps out what to post each day. Having a schedule also helps you build in enough time to create your social media images.

If you're not sure how far out to schedule your posts, creating a content calendar for one week in advance is a good rule of thumb. This gives you the flexibility to keep up with timely topics.

Rather than debate the length of Facebook posts, consider the decreasing attention span of users. A study by the National Center for Biotechnology Information showed that people have an attention span of 8 seconds, which is 1 second less than that of a goldfish.

If you apply that to Facebook, the first three to four words of your update are crucial to grabbing your audience's attention.

Write a description that grabs your audience's attention.

For help creating a compelling Facebook update, try a tool like CoSchedule's Headline Analyzer. Enter your post copy in the text box, and the tool will provide recommendations to improve your update.

On Facebook, there are four types of content you can post: links, images, videos and text updates. According to a Socialbakers study (which analyzed 4,445 business pages between October 2014 and February 2015), video is the most important engagement driver, followed by text updates, links and photos.

However, before choosing content types for your posts, take time to analyze your business and audience. For example, if you want to drive traffic to your blog, the link format likely would work well for you. On the other hand, if brand awareness is your main goal, images and videos are a better bet.

Suppose that you want to drive attention to a link in the description. So in the post, you include an image along with the link. When you analyze the clicks for that post, you find that out of 51 post clicks, there was only 1 link click.

Look at your analytics to see the effectiveness of different post types.

The takeaway is that the content type you chose did not effectively drive attention to the link. Make sure that you check your analytics to see if you're choosing the right content types.

Do you use hashtags while posting on Facebook? A recent Buffer study revealed that posts without hashtags outperform posts with hashtags on Facebook.

However, before you dismiss the idea of hashtags altogether, test them for yourself. Is there a particular hashtag you use for your branding? Using hashtags on Facebook can make sense if they contribute to your brand positioning.

Adidas frequently uses the hashtag #teamadidas in their posts because it's synonymous with their brand.

Use hashtags when they make sense for your business.

Hashtags also may be effective if you're posting about a trending topic.

When you post a link on Facebook, it fetches the metadata automatically. This can be edited.

For example, suppose that you want to republish a post. All you need to do is change the description metadata to fit the post description and suit the current context.

If you're republishing a post, tweak the metadata and add your own keywords.

Remember that Facebook posts are now searchable, so this is an excellent opportunity to add your keywords, too.

Some Facebook managers don't dig into analytics to discover the ideal days or times to post. They simply post when the content is ready.

According to this HubSpot article, the best days to post on Facebook are Thursday and Friday, and the worst days to post are Monday through Wednesday. Of course, you'll want to decide what works best for your page.

To maximize your engagement, it's important to check your analytics. Tools like Facebook Insights and Bitly (if you post links) can be helpful if you don't want to invest in an analytics tool.

If you're looking for a bit more information, there are paid tools available that will give you detailed analytics. For example, Fanpage Karma will give you stats on each type of content.

Find the optimal times to post content on your Facebook page.

Over to You

Businesses are constantly striving to get more attention on Facebook, which has 1.44 billion monthly active users. With the right strategy, you can see more success from your Facebook posts.

What do you think? Have you used any of these tactics in your own Facebook marketing? How do you get more attention for your Facebook posts? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

Six tips for improving your Facebook posts.

(function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.4&appId=159389674132284"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);}(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));About the Author, Ishita Ganguly

Digital marketing strategist by profession. Currently experimenting with social media and mobile content marketing at TechShu. Analytics is fun for her as she gets insights to serve her readers better. Other posts by Ishita Ganguly »

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