March 19, 2024

How to Create a Facebook Updating Strategy that Works for You

Why Facebook Matters to Your Business

Entrepreneurs and businesses of every size have a Facebook Page–and if you don’t, people start thinking you’re “behind the times.”

It’s the “norm.” Don’t ignore it.

Facebook is here to stay.

There are over 600 MILLION active users on Facebook (and counting!). It’s safe to say your ideal audience is on Facebook.

But here’s the deal…

Facebook can feel like over-kill. Or you can feel guilty that you’re not doing enough. That’s why creating a strategy that works for you is so important. This post will help you do just that: find a Facebook update strategy that works for you.

Posting a Facebook Update (status update) is the most integral facet of Facebook. But the goal is to keep things simple, and be efficient with time and strategy.

So today we will help you learn how to create a Facebook updating strategy that works for you. Because you don’t want to feel guilty about how much or little time you’re putting into being present at Facebook.

You will learn:

  • Why you’re only as good as your last post
  • When to post and what to post
  • The best tools to curate content in your industry
  • Getting started with your action plan

Getting people to engage with your posts and click the LIKE button next to your posts is crucial on Facebook.

If you’re last post bombed (no interaction at all), not only will Facebook take note, but your fans who saw it will too, and quickly become uninterested.

That’s why it’s important to track what’s working and what’s not in order to keep your content fresh, inviting and interesting.

The first recommendation is to track the links you share on Facebook using link shorteners. I suggest Bit.ly.

Besides, Bit.ly links save you from long and garish looking URLs. Bitly also helps you collect, organize, shorten and share your links.

All links shared via bitly allow users to view complete, real-time traffic and analytics data. Bitly also powers more than 10,000 custom short URLs … something like this http://bit.ly/AnnsYouTube (customized bit.ly short link to Ann’s YouTube page)

Bitly also offers an analytics service that helps users grow their social media traffic.

Learn more using Bit.ly by following this link.

The next thing to use is Facebook Insights.  Facebook Insights is only available for Business Pages.

 

Here are two areas to watch when you start tracking your Facebook Page using Insights:

1) The average number of LIKES and/or comments.
These stats provide info on your engagement. Track the LIKES and number of comments per post.

All in all, you will know what posts work and which ones fall flat. If you need a number, aim for 3 updates per day.

2) Unlikes.
Watch for UNLIKE spikes. Then pay attention to the content you posted at the time of the UNLIKE spike. This will give you insight as to why people left your page.

How to Start Thinking About Your Facebook Updates to Get In Front of More People

Anything posted on Facebook whether it’s a status update, link or video or picture is considered an object.

Follow this link for a great article with more information about that.

To summarize the article above, you need to know the following

Think of each text update, link, or video or picture update as an object that has three edges. Those edges will determine what  Facebook thinks is important enough to put into the top news feeds of your fans.

You want to show up in the TOP NEWs of your Facebook home page. That’s the page that is displayed by default when you click your Home button. It gets a lot of eye balls. Tons!

Your goal is to get into the top news feeds. Here’s how…

When your object is placed on another person’s Facebook Home Page, that’s Facebook’s way of displaying the updates they think you care about the most – which you’ve indicated behaviorally (by liking and commenting those objects).

  • How often is the user checking you out? How often are they interacting with you, clicking on your posts, commenting and LIKING. The more the better.
  • Type of interaction counts too. More weight is given to comments than LIKEs.
  • If your content is recent and has a lot of activity.

Knowing when and what to post. Pictures elicit more response.

This article titled The Anatomy of a Facebook Post has great info about the data behind effective social media marketing.

I personally have found a lot of research on this topic. Much of it is contradictory. But this is what I have found to be consistent across the research that I’ve done.

Image posts (vs. text and video posts) are more engaging as measured by fan responses likes and shares.

  • Image posts received 22% more engagement than video.
  • Image posts received 54% more engagement than text.
  • Video posts received 27% more engagement than text.

Knowing WHEN to post.

Friday posts generate the most engagement. Posts made before noon get 65% more engagement than posts after noon.

I’ve seen this first hand at Ann’s page with regard to posting in the morning.

Knowing WHAT to Post.

Links to your blog posts and 3rd party articles. If you blog often, which is recommended, aim for 40% to your blog and 60% to other articles.

If you’re having trouble finding content that you think would be useful to your fans, use Google Reader and AllTop.com to find content.

Google Reader

Google Reader constantly checks your favorite news sites and blogs for new content. Whether a site updates daily or monthly, you can be sure that you won’t miss a thing. Google Reader keeps track of your favorite websites. Google Reader is also a great way to listen what’s happening in your industry.

It’s simplifies your reading experience by showing you all your favorite sites in one convenient place. It’s like a personalized inbox that you can check daily or weekly (or whenever).  Also makes it easy to discover new content that interests you.

Go Here to Learn More About Using Google Reader

Alltop

The purpose of Alltop is to help you answer the question, “What’s happening?” about the topic or industry that most interests you. Alltop does this by collecting the headlines of the latest stories from the best sites and blogs that cover that particular topic. They group these collections — “aggregations” — into individual web pages. Then display the five most recent headlines of the information sources as well as their first paragraph.

Go Here to Learn More About Using AllTop.com

Post photos

Mix up your photos. 80% professional and/or business related. But work in the 20% of you that is more personal and that you’re comfortable sharing.

Use video

We recommend you create your own videos. You can also find great content on Youtube that your audience will find of value. Share 3rd party videos too.

Create friends lists

Monitor what content is being shared on Facebook via your niche. That way you’re only seeing their posts. Which really cuts out a lot of the noise.

Here’s Your First Step… Next Actions for You to Take

  1. Decide on your Facebook scorecard. How will you know if it’s working for you? Know the answer to this question before you get started.
  2.  

  3. Create more content and create it more often. Post 3 times a day.
  4.  

  5. Activate your network. Give them something to do with each of your posts (calls to actions). Have them vote on something, click on a link to great content, answer a question, post a photo. Tell ’em what to do.
  6.  

    Before You Leave, Share this on Facebook

About Eric Walker


Eric is an 80/20 Marketing staff member and marketing collaborator. He spends his days writing content and copy for a marketing purpose. Eric is an optimist. He believes in a bright future and our ability to build it together. If you have a question, and/or would like to communicate with Eric directly, email Eric@8020MarketingInc.com

Comments

  1. Hi Eric,
    Very useful info. I was actually just looking for something like this. Mike

  2. I can see you have been doing your social media homework. :) Thanks for all the tips you have here. I now have a much better insight into the inner workings of FB.

  3. GREAT information! One of the biggest challenges with Facebook is engaging with your friends. Many people prefer to “like” a post, rather than make a comment. In fact, some people NEVER make a comment. I find that highly personal post, funny posts, and controversial posts, create the most engagement. Of course, how you handle that engagement makes all the difference.

  4. Eric, this is great and powerful information for the NEO- Social Marketer and people who just have not figured out Facebook yet.
    Yes many business have foaught against the Power Giants for too long and gave in, even GMA tell you to tweet them and answer on their Facebook page! Ether love it or hate it! It is here to stay!

  5. Thanks Mike, Marie and Michael (above for your comments).

    Here’s a minor rant, and the biggest reason for why I wrote this post:

    People are going to continue to struggle if they keep dabbling … with anything social media. (Facebook especially, but same goes for Twitter, Youtube, Blogging)

    It’s black and white to me: either you’re going to continue to struggle, remain overwhelmed and confused, or you’re going get in the game, get clear about what you need to do in social media and just get it done! Systems and processes are key.

    You know it and I know it. Social media isn’t going anywhere.

    The hard truth of it is… most people are just not clear about what they really want to achieve with social media, and as a result, they’re getting left behind.

    It’s time we grow up with social media because the social media space is growing up. That’s what a lot of my social media driven posts add up to.

    My Mission

    My mission is to help you understand the value of social media marketing (not just in theory but in actual strategies that you can take action on) and support you in building a personalized, profitable social media game plan for your unique business. This won’t be some big ‘a-hah’ moment. It will be a consistent series of subtle two millimeter ‘tweaks’ that make all the difference over time.

  6. Eric,
    I can’t thank you enough for your “specifics” in helping us get something out of Facebook. I do have a Q for you. I have only a personal page and want to dump that for two focused Business Pages. I will first create the business pages, then how do I get all of my friends to come to my new pages so I can phase out my personal page? Thank you. Clare Spiegel

  7. Karen Davis says:

    Hello I have a facebook business page that I would like to mass market how exactly would I go about doing this? I would like more information on how to effectively use social media marketing therefore your intial blog was of interest to me. I would appreciate any insight that you can provide. Thank you.

  8. Great topic…

    One of the most popular methods out right now are scripts or apps (several versions out but the concepts are relatively the same) that require your customers to like your page to download a product that they want…

    Now there are several versions/spins available… One variation might require them to do some action (think CPA) other than leave there email address or simply click the like button… another variation, which will create the viral effect, I think many of your readers are looking for.

    These variations are different than the typical opt-in page stuff you are used to seeing, for instance, there would be instant download of the product without them having to opt-in to anything but when taking the action that you required, they get immediate access to the freebie and are simultaneously added to your list, etc… so this would be worth into looking for many.

  9. My only concern with using URL shorteners is if the URL doesn’t have any meta data associated with it or isn’t synced with the Facebook graph system, you don’t get any indication of what’s on the destination page. I feel this doesn’t promote trust in the destination site. You still get that issue with non-meta data sites and using their full URL, but mostly you can read the URL and get an idea of where you’re being sent.

    Otherwise, great and very useful article! :)

  10. Hi Eric, great topic and thanks for being so well informed. I would like to add something that I believe would be useful to some of your readers. This may seem like a plug but it is the absolute truth. There are so many tutorials out there that can teach just about anything to just about anyone who would need to know about most any particular topic.

    I sell tutorials on myself (and give them away as well) on just about any topic relating to internet marketing and approximately 90% of what I know about internet marketing, was learned from tutorials (video, ebooks, audio etc). In fact, I’ve picked up so many skills in the past year that I’m now offering services in my local market and this can be quite lucrative…

    I just completed setting up my Facebook Iframe Fanpage and learned a 100% of it from my tutorials. I rank on the first page of Google (Yahoo & Bing etc.) for my main search terms and half the reason for this is because of my keyword research and on page seo, again, 100% learned from tutorials.

    When you can just sit there and follow along with someone step by step, it makes things so much easier.

    Now just about any topic you want to know about online, you can find free information on it with a little bit of research. I love research myself and do a lot of it… even when I find the answer I’m looking for I may still cross reference it a few more times. Now this can be quite time consuming. Another issue I find with this is most of the time you will only get pieces of the puzzle… meaning, you find information on what you’re looking for but it’s not complete, so you gotta do more research.

    However the right tutorial can save you so much time and frustration, it’s almost always worth it for the few bucks you might have to spend for it. We have become so conditioned with freebies that we often loose sight of the value of our personal time spent in the process (and you know what they say, time is money!)

    You can do a search on Youtube right now and you will find a ton of free tutorials that will walk you through setting up your basic fanpage. I’ve looked at several of them and most of them cover the basics well enough. However, if you want to know some of the insider stuff, you might have to spend a few bucks but if you don’t mind looking around, I’m sure your readers will be able to find an adequate free video tutorial that will suffice.

    Hope this helps!

Trackbacks

  1. […] with What They Want Most June 8, 2011 By Leave a Comment Print PDF Be sure that you have read this post about creating a Facebook Update strategy that works for you first. This Google Reader tutorial is to be applied to what you learned in that post. My mission is to […]

  2. […] First goal should be to encourage engagement NOT pitching your business. Be sure to create a Facebook update strategy that works for you. […]

  3. […] recommend that you start with Facebook.  Developing a Facebook updating strategy so that your Facebook friends can stay with what you do at your MLM Blog, and your business in […]

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