Do you wonder how some companies are able to consistently make Facebook posts that have a high rate of interaction? For many businesses Facebook status updates seem very simple and are often executed without fully engineering the update for maximum potential. Social media strategies have become an integral part of many businesses and their internet marketing efforts, and while status updates may seem simple they can require proper planning in order to make them most effective.
Facebook has an algorithm called EdgeRank, which is Facebook’s algorithm to determine who sees your posts or updates. An improved EdgeRank will allow more of your followers to see your posts and status updates. EdgeRank is based on the interactions between your followers and your posts, so posts that immediately get likes are more likely to show up in the top stories of your followers. Therefore, optimizing posts to get immediate interaction will help improve EdgeRank and the reach of your posts.
We will give you 7 tips for crafting effective Facebook status updates from one of the top internet marketing agencies that will increase the reach of these posts. Keep in mind that you may not want to utilize all of these tips in every single post, but using them when applicable and with balance can increase the effectiveness of you status updates. So without further ado, here are 7 tips that you can use in crafting effective status updates.
1. Scheduling
The time in which a post goes live can have a huge influence on how effective that post really is and the number of people who see it. Scheduling posts to go out during peak times where more followers are likely to see and interact with your posts is one of the most important elements in optimizing your posts. We have already covered the peak times in this post here, so take those times into consideration and experiment until you find the sweet spot where your posts have the most interaction with your specific following.
Using Facebook’s narrative scheduler is an easy way to schedule posts without the use of any external content sharing programs. To do this you should write your post and them click on the small clock icon in the lower left corner of the post box. Once you click it, you will be given the option of setting a specific date and time for the post to go live. This image below will demonstrate how this is done.
2. Adding Tags To Posts
Although adding tags have lost some of the marketing advantages they previously had such as no longer being visible on other pages, adding tags can be a great way to make posts more interactive and interesting for your followers. Adding tags is very simple because all you need to do is type the “@” symbol them click on the profile of the tagged entity in the drop down box as shown below.
3. Adding Location To Posts
It’s debated on whether adding locations to you posts will help with local search ranking on Facebook, but adding location is a great way to provide more content in your post for people to interact with. Many users are more likely to interact with a post when it is local to them, so adding locations to posts can help in increasing the interaction of you post among local users. You can add locations based on city which will give you a map with a pinpoint icon for users to see. Also you can get a little more specific and add locations based on neighborhoods or where your shop is to further localize your posts. This may be beneficial when running local promotions or if helping out in the community, which can help increase followings and interactions of very local users.
To add a location tag, click on the “place mark” icon below the post as shown in the image below.
4. Target By Location
Targeting by location is a newer feature of Facebook but it can allow for much more successful marketing efforts when these campaigns are best suited for specific areas. This features allows the post to be seen by people within the specific area of choice which can be extremely helpful when running promotions at local stores. For example, with my water company we may be trying to run a promotion within California so it is more effective in only showing this promotion to followers in California rather than followers nationwide or globally. To target a specific location click on the “public” box below the post, which will give you a drop down menu that allows you to target by location. Click on the “Location / Language” area and you will be able to select specific areas such as a county, state, or city. An example of this is shown below.
5. Target By Language
Targeting by language can be very beneficial to companies who may have a strong following of people within a certain country or spoken language. For example, with the water company we have a large following and customer base of Spanish speaking people, so crafting a post in Spanish and distributing it among Spanish speaking users can further increase the effectiveness of posts for those particular demographics. To do this you use the same steps as targeting by location or you can reference the image below.
6. Adding Pictures To Posts
Adding pictures to posts can be an extremely beneficial way to increase the effectiveness of your post. There is no doubt that adding pictures or graphics is going to grab more attention than just a text post. People will like this eye-candy and will be much more likely to like or share your post. I find this to be a great way to promote a specific product because it allows followers to visually understand the product, especially if they have not seen or heard of it before. To post a photo with your caption click on the “Photo / Video” tab at the top of the post box, upload a photo, and write your caption. An example of this is shown below.
7. Emphasizing Important Posts
It is also possible to emphasize certain posts that you deem more important. You can highlight a post in two ways; traditional highlighting or pinning the post to the top of the page. It would be great if you could both highlight and pin a post to the top, but Facebook has prevented this from being possible so you will need to figure out which method you want to go with. Highlighting a post means that the post pox will appear horizontally across your entire timeline instead of just half screen. Pinning it to the top is self explanatory, but can be a great way to make sure everyone who visits your page sees the post because it is right there above the fold when they load the page. To highlight a post you need to click the highlighter icon in the top of the post box once it has been posted. An example of this is shown below as the post was pinned to the top.
Wrapping It Up
These 7 tips can be helpful in maximizing the effectiveness of you Facebook posts and ultimately build a stronger following. With the increased use of social media platforms it is important that you using these platforms in the best way possible because it can be one of the most cost effective forms of marketing out there. While Facebook may not be the greatest way to sell individual products and foster conversions, it is a great way to easily build brand awareness and following. So take these tips into consideration when crafting your future Facebook posts, status updates, etc to create the most effective posts possible and increase following due to the interaction element of EdgeRank. Try these tactics out and let us know what you think. Can you think of any other tips?