Five Fab Tips for Facebook

September 14, 2012 By Peg 12 Comments

There was a time when Facebook was easy but these days you need some serious skills to keep up with the challenges and changes. Finding great resources and continually looking for ways to improve and reach your audience is a necessity.

Essential items for a successful Facebook post:

Add a photo with each post. This is essential to be noticed in the Timeline.
Include a call to action (CTA) on each post. It can be a question, request to share the post or something along these lines but to get engagement you need to ask for engagement.
Be consistent! If you ignore your Facebook page, you will lose your fans. Seriously, they will fall off your
Post great content at the proper intervals. If you post items too closely together, you diminish the potency of your posts.
Don’t make your posts too long, keep it under 250 characters for maximum impact.

Examples of engaging, successful posts:

Resources:

12 Most Powerful Ways to Create Facebook Engagement by Rebekah Radice
Facebook Timeline for Business Pages – 21 Key Points to Know by Mari Smith
Post Rocket —Facebook posting at its ultimate smartest. This is still in BETA but request an invite. You can also find PostRocket on Twitter.
15 Creative Tops to Rock Your Timeline Cover Photo for Facebook Pages by Ching Ya
Facebook Edge Rank 101 {infographic} — read and save!

If you feel like Facebook is a monster that you just can’t tackle yet, I highly recommend taking any of Mari Smith’s Facebook classes online. Mari is known as the Queen of Facebook for a reason! She will teach you all the tricks and tips that you will need to feel confident and be successful. Both of her books, Relationship Marketing and Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day, are also excellent resources. I also recommend Dave Kerpen’s Likeable Social Media which “teaches how to harness the power of word-of-mouth marketing to transform your business.”

I hope these Facebook resources help kick your Facebook activities up a notch. I wish you the best of luck with your pages!

What resources do you use to keep up to date on Facebook changes? What pages really encourage you to return again and again? And why? Love to hear from you!

Featured image courtesy of owenwbrown via Creative Commons.

Article by Peg Fitzpatrick

Rebekah Radice

1 Like

You've made so many great points here Peg! I have found that images are the eye-candy that most fans crave. It drives engagement like no other type of post - video, links or status updates.

Great content and consistency are definitely key too though. If you don't understand what the needs of your fans are and give them a reason to make your page a destination, you'll quickly start to hear crickets on your page! ;)

Thank you SO much for including my post in your additional resources. Muaahhh!!!!

PegFitzpatrick

@Rebekah Radice I totally agree on the engagement factor of photos. I haven't had much luck with videos at all.

There are so many things that go into social media to make it all work together, finding what your fans like and respond to is very important.

How many pages on Facebook are destination pages for you? I have a few but also like to check out the timeline occasionally to see what is fresh.

So happy to include you in my resource post. I'm thrilled to have you in our 12 Most community.

Muahhhh back!!

Rebekah Radice

1 Like

@PegFitzpatrick Oddly enough, I don't have any pages that I personally follow. I am in and out of so many for business during the day that I just haven't found the time (or maybe it's the desire) to keep up with more. I've always looked to Twitter when connecting with brands that I'm interested in following. I'm sure that's odd and not the norm, but somehow it's how it's evolved for me.

I spend most of my time in Facebook groups and have found enormous value in them. There's something about Facebook that tears down barriers and allows you to connect with like-minded professionals in a very relaxed format. It opens doors and communication in a way we never had available to us in the past.

The 12Most group is a terrific example of this. It's a community of people that truly enjoy each other, both professionally and personally. That's an amazing accomplishment and something you and Paul should be very proud of. To find a group that supports one another rather then competing and tearing one another down is a breath of fresh air and one I would rather be a part of any day of the week!

PegFitzpatrick

@Rebekah Radice I didn't initially follow too many other pages but what I found was that if I followed some great pages (ex. https://www.facebook.com/thecorcorangroup or https://www.facebook.com/photojojo) it can provide some great content to share. I also think it is helpful to see what is working well for other pages. And of course, Mari's public page is my go-to source for all things Facebook.

I have found that I like Facebook groups too! I love 12 Most and my other favorite is @Tribe2Point0 Kelly Lieberman's PinChat group. She is such a joy and knows more about Pinterest than anyone else. She is really generous with her knowledge and has a built a wonderful community. I think that we met each other through one of Mari's Facebook groups, right?

Thank you so much for your kind comments about our 12 Most community ~ many of my very favorite people are a part of this group and I am really proud of it. It has also helped so many people build their own networks and communities. There is plenty of negativity and self-promotion in social media, having a place where people are happy for your successes and support each other is great.

12 comments

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MalharBarai

Great points Peggy!!

Agree that to achieve success on Facebook, its good to have an image + effective CTA. That also explains why Pinterest is popular too. We like all things visual.

Thanks for sharing!!

@malharbarai Pinterest definitely pushed the image/visual impact in social media. It is really important!

laxbrownie

Excellent points. The same applies for posting on Google Plus.

@laxbrownie Absolutely! Always a photo on Google+ too. It is interesting that longer posts seem to be really popular and get more engagement on Google+.

dbvickery

OK, I haven't been sharing pictures with every post on our fan page, but I've noticed a definite increase in engagement for the statuses that have pictures. I do try to have some personal thought or question for each one. Kinda hard to find appropriate pictures to include on updates that are actively promoting our product. I do try to get creative with some of the shares like "would have been better if you would have done your sentiment analysis". Recently had a picture with a bear and a rabbit...rabbit gets the dirty end of the deal...I point out that we encourage our business analysts to ask clarifying questions, so the client experience does not get "soiled".

@dbvickery I do try to share photos on every post. Guy says if you don't have enough time to post a photo, don't post it. (That may be in What the Plus!, not sure) Photos really pop in the Facebook timeline. Where do you find photos? I usually use Flickr and have really great luck. Scroll through your timeline for a minute and see which posts really catch your eye, I bet they have a large photo.

Have you tried PostRocket? I love it and Do Share as well.

@PegFitzpatrick I'm definitely a fan of Do Share. I've used Flickr, Pinterest, Google Image Search (and just link back to the original content when appropriate). Wonder if even Instagram would be relevant?

@dbvickery Hmmmm not sure. I am sure photos are "public" once they are shared on Instagram but I haven't taken any from their for my blog. I have been very careful with my photo sharing and crediting since we have had so many problems with people stealing writing content on 12 Most, I think that photographers have even more problems.

I think that it all becomes a routine and once you are actively adding photos with each post, it just becomes part of the process. Some posts do provide a little bit more of a challenge and others have a natural fit.