Planning for 2023: Facebook Posting Tips

Facebook could now not be the cool app, or the place to hangout for youthful customers, however it stays probably the most accessed social media platform on the planet, and it continues so as to add extra customers, because it expands into ever extra markets.

Everybody checks into Facebook, as a result of it’s the place you’re related to your closest family and friends, and also you don’t wish to miss out on a birthday notification or another main milestone that’s introduced by way of Facebook submit.

That’s an enormous a part of why virtually 2 billion people nonetheless log into Facebook day-after-day, and as soon as they’re there, they’re nonetheless spending time wanting round, partaking in teams, sharing posts, and many others.

Youthful customers may spend extra time scrolling by means of TikTok, however Facebook stays a important consideration for most manufacturers.

With that in thoughts, what are the important thing finest practices for Facebook in 2023 for a model trying to optimize its in-app presence?

The Algorithm

The very first thing you have to perceive is the News Feed algorithm, and the way it amplifies content material within the app.

Facebook’s Information Feed algorithm, which goals to optimize use engagement, is underpinned by three key parts:

• The place the submit comes from – The algorithm takes into consideration how usually a person engages with a profile or individual, as a way to find out doubtless curiosity. So should you commonly Like or touch upon posts from a Web page, you’ll see extra of its posts – whereas if somebody you commonly work together with shares a hyperlink, you’ll even be extra more likely to see it. That implies that the extra individuals interact along with your Web page content material, the extra doubtless they’ll be served extra of it, as they’ve registered an curiosity in your updates.
• When it was posted – Timeliness stays a consider Facebook’s Information Feed, which additionally implies that preliminary submit response performs a job in figuring out attain. As such, you have to seize consideration among the many individuals who initially see it – which is why you have to perceive when your viewers is on-line (by means of your analytics) and what they’re more likely to interact with.
• How doubtless that it’ll drive engagement – Facebook’s algorithm additionally works to find out what every customers’ engagement habits are, and can optimize to finest lean into their particular behaviors. As per Facebook: “For any given story, we predict how doubtless you is likely to be to touch upon that story, or to share that story”. Facebook may even estimate how lengthy it thinks customers may watch a video for, or learn an article, as additional indicators of doubtless engagement.

The Information Feed algorithm is all the time being up to date and evolving, and Facebook’s huge focus of late has been highlighting extra related video updates, from all throughout the app, in person feeds. Meta has stated that it will continue to add more of these AI-based recommendations over time, and as its algorithm improves, it’s getting higher at highlighting related content material to every person that they in any other case wouldn’t have seen.

That might assist to enhance your attain, however it’s price noting that the main focus is brief video clips, as Meta seems to be to hook into broader consumption behaviors. In case you have concepts for short-form clips, that could possibly be alternative to get extra attain within the app.

Current reviews have additionally proven that Meta has been trying to reduce the amount of divisive political content in user feeds. Which is nice for entrepreneurs, because it leaves extra room to get extra publicity for your content material, whereas Meta additionally notes that Facebook’s algorithm is more and more being geared in the direction of offering what customers say that they ‘worth’, versus what makes them interact.

That’s an necessary distinction. Divisive, attention-grabbing posts spark engagement, but when customers are indicating to Meta that they’d favor extra ‘precious’ experiences, the algorithm could possibly be additional aligned with, say, shares over feedback, relying on how Meta defines this.

There’s no particular information on which metrics Meta’s making an allowance for when it refers to ‘worth’, however it’s one other consideration for your planning.

By way of content material that has resonated on Facebook previously, and will relate to this new ‘worth’ primarily based strategy, a 2019 evaluation by Buffer, which analyzed more than 777 million Facebook posts from Pages, discovered that the posts which noticed probably the most engagement, and subsequent attain, have been both inspirational, humorous, or sensible.

All of those appear to level to precious experiences, which is one thing to bear in mind in your planning.

Posting Greatest Practices

As has been highlighted by various studies, shorter textual content descriptions usually work higher on Facebook, with the optimum size for a Facebook submit being between 25 to 55 characters.

Which isn’t so much – however you’re usually making an attempt to information customers in the direction of clicking on an attachment anyway, so that you don’t wish to be distracting them a protracted, wordy submit.

Having hassle summarizing your posts? You’ll be able to ask ChatGPT to do it for you.

That is the results of me asking ChatGPT to summarize this post, and the abstract right here is fairly correct.

It may not all the time be precisely what you need, and you’ll run it just a few instances, with extra emphasis notes on the type or language (informal, easy, and many others.), which might allow you to discover a good abstract for Facebook.

Perhaps it helps – price making an attempt both approach.

Additionally price noting right here that posts of greater than 80 characters are auto-truncated within the cell app, which supplies you that ‘See extra’ immediate on the finish of the preliminary textual content. That might scale back click-throughs in case your key information just isn’t within the first sentence/s.

By way of codecs, video is the best-performing post type, with reside video driving probably the most engagement, whereas posts with pictures usually carry out higher than these with straight textual content. We’ve additionally seen some success with memes to assist enhance attain and consciousness.

And once more, with Meta placing extra emphasis on short-form content material, that’s the place you need to be wanting, and it’s seemingly all the time including new instruments to simplify Reels creation, even if you don’t have video assets.

You may as well verify in with the Facebook Ads Library to see what your opponents and people in your area of interest are doing. If the advert’s been working for a while, it’s doubtless working, whereas you may as well get spend and impression information on earlier campaigns.

Additionally price noting right here – once you add a hyperlink into the Facebook submit composer, it would robotically generate a hyperlink preview, utilizing the header picture you’ve added to your submit in your website. You’ll be able to then delete the hyperlink from the textual content, and the preview will stay, which could be higher for driving site visitors (as your entire picture is now clickable).

By way of hashtags, the jury continues to be out on Facebook hashtag effectiveness.

At completely different instances, Facebook has put more emphasis on hashtags, however none of these pushes has seemingly caught.

It might be price experimenting – I’d counsel that you just add not more than two hashtags per Facebook submit, and that you just analysis related tags inside the app itself (i.e. run a search and see what comes up, to make sure that it’s related to your online business/merchandise).

Lastly, on posting frequency. This actually will depend on your viewers, however Facebook has previously advised that Pages shouldn’t be overly involved about over-posting, because the Information Feed algorithm will restrict publicity from particular person Pages.

That’s not assured, and you might nonetheless annoy those that’ve chosen to particularly comply with your Web page. However as a information, there’s no definitive impression to posting extra usually.

As a begin, I’d be aiming for three updates per week, shifting as much as 5, then measure efficiency and iterate from there.

By way of when to submit, data from Sprout Social, shared final 12 months, signifies that the finest instances to submit to Facebook are Mondays by means of Fridays at 3 am, and Tuesdays at 10 am and midday, in your native time.

Why 3am? Effectively, there’s doubtless so much much less competitors at the moment, and it could possibly be that by posting in these down instances, that might allow you to get that preliminary engagement spark that you have to attain extra individuals all through the day.

However once more, these measures are all relative, and it might be that your viewers responds to wholly completely different instances and updates – these reviews are meant as preliminary guides that can assist you map out your finest place to begin.

Engagement Course of

It’s necessary that you just monitor your submit feedback, and reply to customers when you possibly can.

Establishing that connection can play an enormous function in constructing model recognition and neighborhood, whereas feedback additionally register within the Information Feed algorithm as engagement, which might assist to spice up submit attain.

You may additionally think about opening up a Facebook group for your model, or becoming a member of related teams so you possibly can tune into associated chatter, whereas guiding extra conversations in the direction of DMs is one other approach to assist improve that interplay and facilitate relationships.

Once more, these notes are designed as pointers, not definitive ‘guidelines’, and chances are you’ll nicely discover that your viewers responds to the other of every little thing advisable right here.

However that’s the important thing driver – just remember to analyze your analytics, and observe your efficiency over time. Whether or not you’re driving extra clicks, or getting extra attain, maintain tabs on the stats that matter to your online business – and once you hit a winner, double-down, and take a look at your theories as to why it labored.