Elements of the Perfect Facebook Post

Part of my New Year's resolution is to get back into my routine: blogging, tweeting, posting, Facebooking... but it needs to have more PUNCH to it, more value for my time.

So I've been researching, like most writers love to do, and I learned quite a few tips about getting better engagement for all that hard promo work we do. In my next few posts, I'll share these tips with you!

Many of us spend way too much time on Facebook, which is fine and dandy...unless no one is listening to what you say. If you're updating your status without likes or comments, then you need to adjust what you're saying, how often you're saying it, etc.

So (drum roll please...) I present the five elements of the perfect Facebook post.

1. Update something of interest to your followers. Basic, I know...but many of us forget this! If we want people to respond--even if it's a promo post--find an angle that will attract the attention of your readers. Kelly Jamieson, for example, has some sexy hockey players as heroes. Who doesn't love those men! And when she talks about them on Twitter and FB, people respond.

2. When you're writing your post, tag relevant pages or people by using the @ sign, like on Twitter. When you hit the @ symbol and start typing the name of the page/person you want, a drop down box will show up. Select the page or person you're aiming to tag and voila! They'll show up on your post, without the @, highlighted in light blue. Why do this? It gets your post in front of more--and more relevant--eyeballs.
Back to Kelly for an example. If she wrote about, say, the Winnipeg Jets, and mentioned them in her post using the @Winnipeg Jets, her post would show up on THEIR Facebook page as well!


3. Include a "call to action." What do you want people to do after reading your post? Questions are a good "CTA", and so is "Like this post if you xyz...". If you're promoting a new release, a good CTA would be "Check out an excerpt here: [link]". Make sure your CTA is connected to the body of your post, at least loosely. So if Kelly (my Vanna White for the day) posted a news article about the Jets, and had an upcoming release featuring hockey, she would tag the Winnipeg Jets then in her CTA say something like "Love hockey? My next book has two hockey players hot enough to melt the ice! Read an excerpt here: [link]" Though the article she posted wasn't directly related to her book, she connected them through a theme.

4. Include a link. When you do this, Facebook will automatically pull in a photo from the page, which is good. But you want a bigger photo. So after you add your link, you'll click "Add photo/video" above the status update box and upload whatever photo you want! The link will still be in your post.

5. Properly add a picture. Not only do more people respond to pictures because of the way they stand out from the rest of their Facebook stream, but when you're posting a picture...you can EDIT your post instead of deleting it and redoing it! Here's how: Write your whole post, then, while in the same status update box, click "Add photo/video" above it. It's very important that you do STATUS, then LINK, then PHOTO. Then, hit POST!

Want to see it in action? Check out today's update: https://www.facebook.com/skylarkade

There you have it! Test this out on your Facebook page or profile, and let me know what kind of response you have! (See, here's MY call to action for this blog post!)