We’ve all witnessed the evolution of the various social networking platforms and seen changes occur in each of them. But what all of these changes have in common is the fact that we’re now receiving an increasing amount of information about an increasing number of people. Our news feeds are inundated with animal photos, petitions to sign, pointless statuses and posts from former classmates boasting about their holiday in the Maldives. This can be pretty annoying for individuals who are on social media, although the consequences aren’t terrible: you can still filter what you wish to see and what you don’t.
It does however raise a question for your professional page: in this context, what should you do to attract traffic to your site through social media?
In this article, we’ll focus mainly on Facebook, although certain tips can also be applied to other social media platforms.
Statistically speaking, there’s a high chance that you already spend a significant amount of time on Facebook. When browsing, whether on your phone or computer, have you ever noticed that you seem to miss certain posts from a friend or from a page you follow? This is normal – no need to panic.
Remember when you used to see every single post from your friends and the pages you followed? Yes, that was a long time ago. Since then, Facebook realised that it wasn’t possible for every user to see all the posts from their network: thus, they implemented an algorithm to determine what you’d see and what you wouldn’t.
For now, we won’t go into detail about Facebook’s ‘reach’ feature – we’ll talk more about this in a later article.
All you need to know for the time being is that the more popular a post is (high number of likes, comments and shares), the more likely it will be to appear in your friends’ news feeds.
What does this mean for your company?
If you want your posts to be seen and read by the largest possible number of people through organic reach (as opposed to paid reach), it’s absolutely vital that you create quality content to encourage interaction from your followers.
5 tips to help you create an interesting post
1. Avoid the mundane – be interesting.
There’s absolutely no point in posting just for the sake of it. This means you must never privilege quantity over quality. The content you’re going to post should be the sort of thing you would share with your friends. Imagine you’re in a meeting and have 2 minutes to speak: what would you say to keep people interested?
2. Select a good quality photo*
It’s no secret – posting good-quality photos will inevitably attract your fans’ attention. It’s crucial to spend time looking for an eye-catching photo that will pull your audience in and encourage them to respond.
3. Be positive!
Positive posts inspire more interaction. Stay professional at all times: this means not speaking badly of your competitors, for example, as this kind of negative behaviour will create a negative image of your company.
4. Encourage people to react
Ask your followers to comment on and share your posts. Encourage them to give feedback and opinions and, if the post addresses a particularly important matter, ask them to share it.
5. Make sure your timing is perfect
Many companies don’t realise that there are optimal times for posting on social media. If you want your content to be seen and read, it’s crucial that you find out when is the optimal posting time for your page. We’ll discuss this point in more detail in a later article.
Over to you!
So what about you? What do you think are the key ingredients for a successful post? Let us know in the comments!
*For more on image dimensions to use on Facebook, see this excellent article from Jon Loomer.
