Welcome to our series on writing great Facebook posts! In our first post, we'll be covering some of the positive post success metrics that Facebook offers you, what the value of each is, and how they relate to each other. We'll also cover how each of these can begin to help you with whether you've written a great post.
By the time you've finished reading my series, you'll not only be able to identify great Facebook posts, you'll also be able to analyze those Facebook posts to figure out why they were great and what you can do in the future to make posts for your Facebook Page that are even better!
How Can You Tell if You're Writing Great Facebook Posts?
We'll start with the easiest and most obvious indicator that your Facebook posts are working, the quantity and quality of the interactions on your posts. Here's a quick break-down on the most common interactions you'll receive, what the value is in each, and how you can use them to create even better Facebook posts in the future!
Great Facebook Posts Will Drive More Likes Than Your Average Post
Likes on a post are the most common interaction on Facebook. There's a low barrier to taking action, you don't have to think of something useful to say as you would with a comment or when sharing a post, so most people will like a post.
This is a good starting point, but likes aren't very valuable. They're a quantity based metric. More likes shows that your post is getting more exposure and that your post resonated with the audience that saw it.
Great Posts Will receive Useful Comments and Start Discussions
Comments are your second most valuable interaction on Facebook, and they are where we really start to find out if we're writing great posts. Comments are more useful because they require more effort from your community. They show that not only did someone think your post was great, but they felt strongly enough about your content that they had a thought about it that they wanted to share with you or the other commenters.
It's also a great opportunity to learn what you did well, and how you can improve, directly from the people who are seeing your posts. To get the full value out of a comment, you'll want to engage with the commenter.
Share your thoughts on their comment. If they have critical feedback for you, don't take it personally, instead ask them for more feedback on how you can do better in the future and what they would like to see more of.
The ultimate value in comments comes from Facebook posts that start discussions. When you get your Facebook community to start talking to each other about what you're posting, you know that it's great content that they are really passionate about!
People will Share a Great Facebook Post More Often
Shares are likely to be your most rare type of interaction, and are second in value only to clicks/views, because shares help get you free exposure to a new audience that can find you and start interacting with your posts!
There is a huge barrier to sharing a post. To be shared, a post has to not only be great, but so great that the reader wants to share it with their friends. And of course most shares include at least a sentence or two with the reader's feelings on the post.
This means to be shared you have to write a post that someone is willing to read, think about, spend the time to form an opinion on, and then also decide that they want to share your post and their opinion on it with their friends. That's a lot of work for your community!
Great Posts Get Clicked and Viewed
The key interaction for most Facebook communities is driving clicks to their links and views to their videos. These interactions are most valuable because they will most often tie directly to a business goal. Whether you want to drive clicks to a landing page to sign up for a webinar or you have a great how-to video that will help your customers better understand how to use your product, you'll need to create a great post to get people to take those actions.
You'll also need to understand that those other interactions are also essential. If you aren't engaging with your community or you aren't building a community around your content then you're not going to be successful in using Facebook to achieve your business goals.
What Did We Learn?
In general, a great post will:
- Drive more likes than the average post
- Receive useful comments from your community
- Start discussions between your Facebook community members
- Be shared more often than the average post
- Ultimately drive more clicks and views to your content
In our next post in this series, we'll talk about what indicators you can watch out for to figure out if a Facebook post isn't great, and what you should do to correct the problem! Read on to learn more about writing great Facebook posts!
