Social Media Guide for Wattpad

Practice (Facebook) (answers)

Previously in the Guide, I listed six elements of a Facebook post. I asked you to tell me, in order (just the numbers is fine) of importance, from most to least, how are these elements ranked. Here’s the list again. 

1.       Content that’s 180 – 200 words long at the most, but no less than 50 words .

2.        A picture.

3.       A call to action (e. g. click here, like this, etc.).

4.       A grabber of a headline (e. g. “You’ll Never Believe …” or “I Bet You Can’t …” or “Do You Think …”)

5.       Posting within a half an hour of when you know your audience is on Facebook (determined by examining Facebook page analytics – you get these if you have 30 or more followers).

6.       Matching content to your buyer personae’s needs. 

The answer is to start with an understanding the job of your Facebook content. It has six jobs.

1.       Be seen.

2.       Be clicked on.

3.       Be read.

4.       Be liked.

5.       Be shared.

6.     Be spread. 

These jobs have corresponding elements in the first list. So – let’s match ‘em in order.

1.     Be seen – you need a picture. Posts with pictures are 53% more likely to be seen. Think about your Facebook wall. Without pictures, it’s a wall of text.

2.     Be clicked on – you need to post within a half an hour of when you know your audience is on Facebook. Now, those times and days can change over time. And if you have a small number of fans, one or two can really skew the numbers. If your metrics say your users are online on Mondays more often than other days, you should still post to Facebook every day. But post two or three times on Mondays and take advantage of the increased audience.

3.       Be read – you need an interesting headline. Content with Upworthy and Huffington Post-style headlines is beginning to see a backlash. But you don’t have to sound like a tabloid. True story: I have a blog post called Hesitation Generation. Using the title was not getting me readers. Instead using a title (the blog title was not changed) of How is Social Media Changing Relationships? worked beautifully. Experiment with post titles. Ask questions. Leave something to the imagination. Make your readers feel they’re going to learn something.

4.       Be liked – write content that’s between 50 and 180 or 200 or so words but no more. You don’t want less, because we all see those quick hits, all the time. They’re like junk food. And while there is nothing wrong with junk food content, your fans should not be getting a steady diet of it. 50 words also assure that your content gets a See More link. Facebook records the click and boom! Your post is being read. But anything more than about 200 or so words means there’s a second page and a new tab is opened. Most people don’t like that. You want enough content to go beyond junk food and give people something to read, but not so much that they feel it’s too much. This is a balancing act. By the way, your first few sentences are valuable real estate, as that’s what readers see before the See More link. Use them wisely!

5.       Be shared – match content to your buyer personae’s needs. Why isn’t this higher up on the list? Well, truth be told, all of this stuff is helpful and necessary. But an image, a good headline, not being too long, and posting when your audience is online are all necessary before you even get to this stage of the game. But, seriously, don’t post content if your buyer personae won’t be interested in it. They’ll stop liking your page, and you’ll really be messed up.

6.    Be spread – look, it’s a call to action! Truth is; most content automatically contains these nowadays.  What’s the nirvana of content spread? True story – I’m a fan of Postmodern Jukebox (Google ‘em; they’re fun). They have a cover song where their lead singer raps in Yiddish. No lie. My father reads a newspaper (among other papers) which is partly in Yiddish. I wrote to that paper, and sent them to the link to the song with the rap. Will that newspaper write an article about the band? I have no idea. Will either of them link it all back to me? Probably not. And it doesn’t matter. See, this is one of the pieces of the Rule of Thirds. Sharing others’ content is the act of spreading it. You are helping their content achieve content nirvana by helping it do its sixth job.   

If you can be the person who speeds others’ content along to content nirvana, they will start to do the same for you. 

You may be coming to the realization that all of this stuff is important. Very good! Because these are all ingredients in the stew; you need all of this stuff. 

The media is the same as last time, in order to give you a refresher. The link is actually part of the answer. The image is pretty close to being an answer, too. The YouTube video is pretty useful, too. 

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