How to Post to the Facebook News Feed to Maximize Engagement

 

You want to increase engagement on your Facebook page.

You know that contests, deals, and offers can help so you’ve decided to run a promotion on your Facebook Page.

You’ve setup the tab using an approved Facebook Promotion App and you’re ready to launch.

BEWARE!  Do NOT fall into the
“if you build it, they will come” pit.

Simply having a contest or promotion live is not the end. You’ve got to capture attention and drive fans and their friends to the promotion.

To many businesses are failing to get the word out properly and then wondering why the engagement is lower than expected on their Facebook promotion.

Getting the attention of and making it easy for all fans (desktop and mobile) to access the promotion on Facebook can totally make or break your promotion getting traction!  It can mean the difference between 5 entries and 500 entries; between 5 Likes and Shares and 5000 Likes and Shares!

So how do you best get the word out on Facebook?

Here’s How:

Post a photo or video to your News Feed with a call to action and a Smart URL in the description field.

Why a photo or video?

Facebook, in its own research, found that the most successful posts for capturing the attention of users and inspiring action are visual. Photo albums generated 180 percent more engagement than other types of posts, and individual photos 120 percent more. Since 40 percent of a Facebook user’s time is spent in the News feed, capturing attention to inspire a “Like,” comment or share by using images is critical.

Quick Guide for posting 

This works for posting to your Facebook Page or a Facebook personal profile.

1. Go to your Timeline on Facebook and select “Photo / Video” for your new message.

 

2. Next Select “Attach Photo / Video”

 

3. Upload a Photo 

Choose the image you want to post, add a text description to inform viewers of the promotion (this is the call-to-action that fans will see in their News Feed when the image catches their eye!), and include a smart URL to the tab in the description so that desktop and mobile viewers can access the tab.

 

4. Add Concise Text Descriptions to Your Post

Facebook posts should be 250 characters in length or less.  Jeff Bullas notes Facebook research stating that posts of this length or less generate 60% more engagement than posts longer that 250 characters.

Use the K.I.S.S. methodology – Keep It Simple Silly

 

5. Use the Smart URL

Facebook revealed that more than half of their active users access the platform from mobile devices. Since Facebook’s iPhone and Android Apps, as well as their mobile version do not incorporate custom tabs into the Page navigation nor show the custom tab content if a wall feed post containing a  tab app url is clicked, then mobile users would be left out and have a bad user experience (Page not found).

SOLUTION: With TabSite this is not so!  All TabSite users have access per tab and sub-page to generate a mobile friendly Smart url that can be used to direct traffic to the custom tab.  Get Smart URL > 

 

6. Schedule the Facebook Post 

You can simply publish the post, but best practice would be to  schedule it to go out at a optimum time.

On each fan page Facebook offers ability to schedule a time when a post will go live.  This is a valuable tool because you can plan ahead and ensure posts go live at times when your audience (fans) are most likely to be on Facebook.

You can prepare a post and schedule it to appear later by adding a date and time in the future before you post it. You can schedule a post up to 6 months in advance in 10-minute intervals.

From your Page’s sharing tool:

1. Choose the type of post you want to add to your Page
2. Click the time  icon in the lower-left of the sharing tool
3. Choose the future year, month, day, hour and minute when you’d like your post to appear
4. Click Schedule

If you choose a date in the past, the post will appear immediately at the appropriate place on your Page’s timeline. All times correspond to the current time zone you’re in.

Following this procedure gives you the best means of sharing information about your promotion and drawing in fans to participate.  As the Facebook study showed, photos and videos get the most engagement.  They capture the attention of viewers.  Since most Facebook users spend the most time on Facebook in their news feed, this offers a way to capture their attention and pull them in to the promotion.  With photos and videos continually performing better in engagement (Likes, Shares, and Comments) this method is the best current practice for sharing your promotion on Facebook.

For Creating Custom Facebook Videos as Posts:

Interested in creating a short, custom video for your Facebook contest or promotion?  Have a look at  Brand VideoMaker from TabSite.  This tool is especially built for Facebook Pages to enable Page Admins to create and post Facebook videos to the news feed.

 

 

 

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Author: Mike Gingerich,  TabSite Co-Founder.  Facebook and Internet Marketer. Part geek, part marketer, total social media junkie. TabSite is a leader in Facebook fan page tools for businesses. TabSite offers brands the power to boost Facebook marketing with apps, contests, and promotion tools.