Planning for 2023: Facebook Posting Tips

Facebook could now not be the cool app, or the place to hangout for youthful customers, but it surely stays essentially 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 linked to your closest family and friends, and also you don’t need to miss out on a birthday notification or another main milestone that’s introduced through Facebook publish.

That’s an enormous a part of why nearly 2 billion people nonetheless log into Facebook every single day, and as soon as they’re there, they’re nonetheless spending time trying round, partaking in teams, sharing posts, and so on.

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

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

The Algorithm

The very first thing you’ll want 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 publish comes from – The algorithm takes into consideration how usually a consumer engages with a profile or individual, as a method to find out seemingly 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 signifies that the extra individuals interact along with your Web page content material, the extra seemingly 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 signifies that preliminary publish response performs a task in figuring out attain. As such, you’ll want to seize consideration among the many individuals who initially see it – which is why you’ll want to perceive when your viewers is on-line (by means of your analytics) and what they’re more likely to interact with.
• How seemingly that it’ll drive engagement – Facebook’s algorithm additionally works to find out what every customers’ engagement habits are, and can optimize to greatest lean into their particular behaviors. As per Facebook: “For any given story, we predict how likely you might be to comment on that story, or to share that story”. Facebook may also estimate how lengthy it thinks customers would possibly watch a video for, or learn an article, as additional indicators of seemingly engagement.

The Information Feed algorithm is at all times 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 consumer 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 consumer that they in any other case wouldn’t have seen.

That would assist to enhance your attain, but it surely’s value noting that the main focus is brief video clips, as Meta seems to hook into broader consumption behaviors. When you have concepts for short-form clips, that might be alternative to get extra attain within the app.

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

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

There’s no particular data on which metrics Meta’s making an allowance for when it refers to ‘value’, but it surely’s one other consideration to your planning.

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

All of those appear to level to helpful experiences, which is one thing to remember in your planning.

Posting Finest Practices

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

Which isn’t quite a bit – however you’re usually attempting to information customers in direction of clicking on an attachment anyway, so that you don’t need to be distracting them an extended, wordy publish.

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 at all times be precisely what you need, and you may run it a number of occasions, with extra emphasis notes on the fashion or language (informal, easy, and so on.), which might make it easier to discover a good abstract for Facebook.

Possibly it helps – value attempting both method.

Additionally value noting right here that posts of greater than 80 characters are auto-truncated within the cellular app, which supplies you that ‘See more’ immediate on the finish of the preliminary textual content. That would cut back click-throughs in case your key data shouldn’t be within the first sentence/s.

By way of codecs, video is the best-performing post type, with reside video driving essentially the most engagement, whereas posts with photographs 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 ought to be trying, and it’s seemingly at all times including new instruments to simplify Reels creation, even if you don’t have video assets.

You can too test in with the Facebook Ads Library to see what your rivals and people in your area of interest are doing. If the advert’s been operating for a while, it’s seemingly working, whereas it’s also possible to get spend and impression information on earlier campaigns.

Additionally value noting right here – while you add a hyperlink into the Facebook publish composer, it should robotically generate a hyperlink preview, utilizing the header picture you’ve added to your publish in your web site. 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 occasions, Facebook has put more emphasis on hashtags, however none of these pushes has seemingly caught.

It might be value experimenting – I might recommend that you just add not more than two hashtags per Facebook publish, and that you just analysis related tags throughout 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 relies 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 may nonetheless annoy those that’ve chosen to particularly observe your Web page. However as a information, there’s no definitive affect to posting extra usually.

As a begin, I’d be aiming for 3 updates per week, shifting as much as 5, then measure efficiency and iterate from there.

By way of when to publish, data from Sprout Social, shared final yr, signifies that the greatest occasions to publish 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 seemingly quite a bit much less competitors at the moment, and it might be that by posting in these down occasions, that might make it easier to get that preliminary engagement spark that you’ll want 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 occasions and updates – these experiences are meant as preliminary guides that will help you map out your greatest start line.

Engagement Course of

It’s vital that you just monitor your publish feedback, and reply to customers when you’ll be able to.

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

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

Once more, these notes are designed as pointers, not definitive ‘rules’, and you could nicely discover that your viewers responds to the alternative of the whole lot really helpful right here.

However that’s the important thing driver – just be sure you analyze your analytics, and monitor your efficiency over time. Whether or not you’re driving extra clicks, or getting extra attain, preserve tabs on the stats that matter to your online business – and while you hit a winner, double-down, and check your theories as to why it labored.