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Tips for Better Facebook Posts
The Sprocket Report
Post more professionally for greater engagement by following this step-by-step tutorial. Already a Facebook marketing whiz? Feel free to share your favorite tips in the comments section!
Sometimes sloppy Facebook posts happen because folks are trying to get too much marketing done in too little time. But sometimes it’s because business owners just haven’t been shown how to use the tool to their advantage. Below are our steps for better looking and more engaging Facebook posts.
A common Facebook status is to post a link to an article found on another website. This could be your own latest blog article or an article you’d like to share with your followers.
Start by copying the URL of the web page where the article you want to share is posted.
Paste that URL in the Status Box on your Facebook Business Page where it says “Write something.”
Facebook will automatically pull up that web page and any graphics associated with the page.
Once the page is linked, you don’t need to keep the URL in the status box, which is good because they’re usually long and ugly. Go ahead and delete the URL – the link will remain. Instead, type your own comment about the article in the status box.
Facebook may show you more than one graphic element, the second one cropped. You’ll see thumbnails of all of the available graphics in a gallery below your post.
To make your post looks nicer, choose just one of the graphics to display. Click on the little blue numbered box of the graphics you DON’T want to use. The one that’s left will fill the space.
Now you may see two fields, if provided by the webpage. Some websites are coded to display the title and the summary of the article on that page. Others may provide the same boilerplate branding info regardless of which article you’re sharing from their site.
Fortunately, you can change this. If you click in the top field, you can delete the text there and replace it with something more engaging such as the title of the specific article you are sharing instead of just the title of the online magazine.
By clicking on the second field, you can replace that text with a summary or first sentence from the article you are sharing.
Now that your post looks more attractive and has a more focused message, you can schedule when you want it to be shared. Scheduling is a feature of Business Pages so you won’t find that on your personal Facebook page. Click on the arrow next to Publish to get the drop-down menu.
When you click on Schedule, choose the day and the time when you want your post to appear. Then click on the blue Schedule button.
At the top of your timeline, there will be a new box that says you have “1 Scheduled Post.” If you schedule a bunch of posts, it will tell you how many you lined up.
When you click on “See post,” you will see all the posts you have scheduled as well as the days and times you have set them to appear. If one day you are scheduling a bunch and they seem to be out of order, just refresh your page and they’ll sort themselves chronologically.
If you click on a Scheduled Post, it will open so you can edit it. Know that you can only edit what YOU wrote in the status box. You can also change the scheduled date and time or delete the post entirely. If you remove the schedule, the post goes into Draft mode until you reschedule or delete it.
Writing about how to create better posts takes much longer than actually doing it! Business owners and not-for-profit volunteers usually have too much on their plates to fuss with Facebook best practices, but since it’s worth doing, we wanted to take the time to explain the steps. If it’s still too much, we offer several levels of social media service. Just give us a call – we’re always happy to help!
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Kate Gingold
I have been writing a blog with web marketing tips and techniques every other week since 2003. In addition to blogging and client content writing, I write books and a blog on local history.
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I have been writing a blog with web marketing tips and techniques every other week since 2003. In addition to blogging and client content writing, I write books and a blog on local history.
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