More Facebook Tips
Last time I talked about the difference between Pages and Profiles, the pros and cons of each, and a little how-to. I wanted to follow up with just a few tips I’ve picked up along the way about how to post and what to post on your Social Media.
*For those of you waiting for more spiritual type posts, I’m on it. Stay tuned.*
Thoughts on Goals
It’s not my goal to sell books on social media. Selling books on social is almost impossible anyway. The goal, for me, is to build a community, and to create strong, friendly relationships with the people in it.
People hate being sold to. But people love sharing bits of their lives with me and for me to share bits of my life with them.
I share my photos of spiderwebs, a favorite hobby of mine.
I post uplifting memes and videos that reflect my personal philosophy and beliefs, and that leave people feeling better than before they watched them.
And I post about books.
Maggie’s FB rule of thumb: Personal posts outnumber promotional posts by 4 to 1.
Use images in every post
Notice what catches your eye when scrolling through your own newsfeed. It’s images. Big, bright, interesting, odd, curious beautiful images.
According to Hubspot, Facebook posts with images are seen by 2.3 times more users than posts without graphics.
So use images. Use them legally, don’t just lift them from elsewhere.
Posting Links on FB
If your post includes a link that is a non-Facebook link, like a youtube link, or a book retailer link, or a link to your website or newsletter, very few people will see the post. As you know Facebook controls how many see your posts. They want your ad dollars so they make it hard to reach your fans without spending money on ads.
My tricks to get around this a little bit are to include any external URLs on the graphic itself. It’s not clickable, so it must be a short, simple, easy to remember link. I use PrettyLinks to create short links to specific books or series, and then print those on my graphics.
For book retailer links, I often post those in comments, under a post rather than in the post itself.
For videos, far more people will see your video on Facebook if you upload it directly to your Page, rather than linking to it on Youtube.
*Note, a graphic like the one above contains too much text to be used in a boost or Facebook Ad. Ads and boosts must have so little text it’s hard to convey anything at all. Book covers are not supposed to count as text but often get rejected for it anyway. If you appeal, it will pass, unless you never hear back at all, which has happened to me three times.
Share high value posts
Game of Thrones
Sharing “high value” posts from other pages you follow is an excellent practice. High value posts are posts that have lots of views, and have been shared many times. They include images and people comment and like all over them. In short, they’re popular. Some beloved high value posts are jokes about popular TV shows, holiday related humor, and those “What’s your Hobbit name?” type quizzes. People LOVE those.
Game of Thrones combined with Romance Novels.
By making sure there are fun, popular, interesting things on your page over and over again, you make sure you get more page likes and activity on your page which in turn, ensures other posts on your page will be seen by more viewers. It’s helps the mysterious FB algorithms kick in.
Also, when people keep seeing posts they love and want to share in their newsfeed, coming from your page but perhaps shared by others, they’re going to come and like your page if they haven’t already.
I’m seeing some authors who just post retailer links to buy their books over and over and over again. Don’t do that. No one wants to see that and few will anyway due to the external links.
The Sign-Up Button
Facebook Pages have an optional Sign-Up Button. I have mine set to Sign Up for my newsletter. I also have buttons for that on my websites and going out regularly on Twitter.
Funneling your page followers to your newsletter and Facebook Group is a powerful thing to do. Those readers are the only ones who actually get to see everything you post. Well, that is, if they want to. They’ll need to scroll through the Group posts and open the email newsletter to see it but at least they are presented with the opportunity. On your Page, most of your followers will never see your posts. I have 23,000+ Page followers, and my very best posts only reach a few thousand.
So the FB Groups, and your personal Newsletter are vital. Use your Page to encourage people to join those.
Facebook Insights
Click that Insights button regularly and look around all the data you can find there. You can learn which of your posts performed best, and which didn’t. You can find what day of the week and even what time of day your Page followers are most active on Facebook. You can see what other Pages are doing compared to your own and adapt.
It's not as much work as it seems.
I spend an hour to an hour and a half on Facebook every morning, and I am running 3 pages and a Group. I keep finding new Pages with lots of sharable posts, and I follow them “as my page.” (Go to the Page you want to follow, and instead of clicking LIKE, click the 3 little dots. In that dropdown, choose, LIKE AS YOUR PAGE.) I post a promotional post a day as well, and then I’m done.
So those are my Facebook tips. I hope this helped.
I’m sure there’s tons I didn’t cover, so if you have questions or things you’d like me to address, ask in comments here or message me privately and I’ll do another post where I answer them.
A much more spiritual post is coming up next. Until then, have a great weekend!
Maggie
#maggieshayne #Facebooktips #whattopost #socialmedia #facebook #Facebookbasics #indieauthor #entrepreneurs