Transcript for Facebook Content 101
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[00:03] Hey guys, this is Amanda from Team Edgar, first of all just wanting to say thank you so much for everyone who’s joining us from literally all around the world. I’m seeing so many different locations. Someone’s in Cleveland, awesome, so am I, Kelsey. We’ve literally got people from all over the world, Honduras, New Zealand, all over the US. So I want to say welcome and thank you for joining us. We are gonna get started just in a second here. I’m gonna go ahead and pull up my presentation. So like I said, my name’s Amanda. I’m a member of Team Edgar and I’m going to be presenting today’s webinar about creating killer Facebook content. We know this is a really popular subject, so we’re really, really excited about this webinar today. Before we go ahead and get started, I know a lot of you have already figured out the chat, so that’s great. You can feel free to use that throughout the webinar.
[00:49] Right now though, if you can just let me know that you can hear me and that you can see my screen, that would be awesome just to make sure that we’re all ready to go. Once we kind of get ready to get started, the webinar is gonna last about 40 to 45 minutes of the presentation. We also have a little interactive part towards the end. And then we’ll have time for some discussion and questions at the very end of the webinar.
[01:13] So if you do have any questions about the content that we’re covering or about Edgar or social media in general, you can feel free to pop those into the chat as we go along. But if you have any really, really juicy questions that you wanna make sure that we answer, hang onto those until the end and we will get to those after the webinar’s over. So, I think we are all ready to go so let’s just jump right in so we don’t waste any more time. So today, we’re gonna talk about a few different things. And I’ll give you a little preview of the webinar before we get started.
[01:42] So first of all, we’re gonna talk a little bit about the reality of Facebook reach, so organic reach on Facebook, what it’s doing and what that means for your social strategy. We’re also going to talk about why people share content on social media. So these are some kind of scientific, psychological reasons why people tend to share certain things versus others on social, which of course, is important to know when you’re creating your content.
[02:08] We’re going to talk about some dos and don’ts for your Facebook posts. And this is gonna be the bulk of today’s webinar. And some of these dos and don’ts are gonna come right from Facebook. So really good stuff there.
[02:19] And then we’re gonna, at the end, we’re gonna have some examples of some good and bad Facebook posts. So we’re gonna bring in Tom from our social media team to kind of do a little semi interactive portion of the webinar where we’re gonna look at some examples of some not so great Facebook posts and then tell you what you could do to make them better. So that’s always a fun part.
[02:40] And of course, we have to throw in a little teeny disclaimer at the bottom, just saying that of course these are all things that we do here at Team Edgar with our own Facebook account, and while we definitely stand behind these tips 100 percent, we of course cannot guarantee that doing everything we talk about here is going to skyrocket your Facebook reach and engagement. We certainly hope that the ideas that we’re sharing are going to help you come up with a better strategy for Facebook, but just gotta put that out there.
[03:08] So, let’s go ahead and get started, first of all talking about the reality of Facebook reach. And this is kind of not a very fun reality. As we know, Facebook is constantly changing its algorithm all the time. And a lot of times, it’s not telling us what’s happening behind the scenes. And so the average reach of a Facebook post is kind of always fluctuating. So, for example, there’s a website called Localwise, that, roundabout every month or two, they do a, not necessarily a study, but a look at a bunch of different Facebook pages to see what their average reach is. And you can see here by the numbers that it has changed drastically month to month from the beginning of this year.
[03:56] They just did another version of this study in July, and the rate there was, again, around eight percent as far as reach for a Facebook post. But in March, it was down to 2.6 percent, which is pretty low. Now it’s back up a little higher. But still, 8.2, 8.3 percent is still not great reach on Facebook. And we do know that. But that’s just the reality of Facebook reach right now. So we definitely need to try some different things to reach more of that audience on a page. But basically, the takeaway from these numbers here, I’m not really much of a data person, but I can definitely tell you this, that reach on Facebook is unpredictable and it changes all the time. And like I said, Facebook doesn’t always tell us when they’re changing their algorithm or doesn’t tell us what we can do to get better reach.
[04:44] So, everything that we’re gonna talk about in today’s webinar are some different things that you can try to increase that reach to get it as high as it possibly can be, even though the highest can still sometimes be pretty low. But that’s always the goal, is to just try and get the best reach on Facebook.
[05:01] So going from there, I want to talk a little bit about some reasons why people share content on social. And these reasons are actually, they might seem a little out of place for a webinar like this, but it is really important to understand why somebody would share something on a social network. And these are ooey gooey, psychological reasons in some ways, but they’re interesting too.
[05:26] So first of all, the number one reason people would share content on social is so they can feel like they’re delivering valuable and entertaining info to other people. So, you’ve probably done this yourself. You’ve shared a funny cat video or a link to some article about, oh, like yesterday, there was an article about how they think they’ve found water on Mars. That’s pretty cool, that’s entertaining, that’s interesting. I might share that because I find it interesting and maybe my friends would find it interesting as well. So a lot of times, people are sharing things simply because they think that for them, it’s entertaining and for their friends or family or whoever they’re friends with on Facebook, that they would also find it valuable and entertaining.
[06:11] Another reason is to just define themselves to other people. So this kind of ties into number one because obviously, the type of content that you’re sharing on social media, and especially on Facebook, it does say something about you, right? Sometimes, this is very blatant, like if you’re sharing something political or religious on Facebook, that definitely says something about you and your beliefs and your values and opinions and stuff like that. But even if you’re just sharing cute cat photos on Facebook, that still kind of defines you and your online persona. So just defining themselves to other people, so to their friends and family and peers, is another reason that people will share things on social.
[06:53] A third reason, which is to grow and enrich existing relationships. So, for example, let’s say that you’re scrolling through your news feed and you see that somebody posted an interesting news article and you’re like, “Oh, you know what? My friend Michelle would really like to read this,” and so you share it with Michelle. Or maybe you see a really beautiful photo of mountains somewhere and you tag one of your friends and you’re like, “Oh my god, we need to go here sometime.” That’s just a way of enriching those relationships that you already have with people on Facebook, but you’re sending them something, you’re sharing something with them or tagging them in a photo or a status update just to kind of be like, “Hey, you might be interested in this too.”
00:07:37 The fourth reason is to feel a sense of self fulfillment. This is one of those definitely psychological ones. But let’s face it, in this day and age, when digital and social media is such a huge part of people’s lives, a lot of people do feel like if it’s not on social media, it didn’t happen. You’ve probably heard that before. So just sharing things on Facebook kind of just makes you feel good about yourself sometimes. Or you might feel like, “Oh, until I post these photos from my family reunion, nobody will know what happened,” and so then when you do post them, you feel like, “Okay, now people know what’s going on in my life.” So that can also just lead to that sense of self fulfillment or feeling good about yourself.
00:08:20 And the fifth reason is just to get the word out. So whether it’s about an event or maybe something that just happened in the news, anything where you’re wanting to share something so that other people know about it. So that’s kind of the fifth reason there.
00:08:35 Now, if we go and think about those five reasons again, think to yourself, “What do all of these motivations have in common?” Because there is one thing that all of them have in common and that one thing is, that it’s about them and not you. So this is definitely important to remember when we’re creating content for Facebook. Because the reason that people will share things on Facebook or on any social network is because they can connect to it, they feel like it’s saying something about them if they’re sharing it. So yes, it might be content from your blog, it might be a product that you’re trying to sell, but it needs to say something also about your audience.
00:09:14 So, the key here is to create content that your followers can relate to and recognize themselves in. And that’s something I definitely want you to remember throughout the rest of this webinar because that’s really the key when it comes to getting people to engage with your content and to share it on Facebook.
00:09:33 So, out of the heavy, psychological stuff now. We’re gonna get into those dos and don’ts. So here are some dos, and these are straight from Facebook. So a lot of times, when Facebook changes its algorithm, it doesn’t always tell us that it’s done this. But every once in a while, they will put out a little news article or a blog post saying, “Hey, we changed something. Here’s what you should be doing now in order to get the most out of your Facebook posts.” So, there are a couple dos, the first one being that you do want to share links with an image preview. Sounds pretty self explanatory, but it used to be that the best way to get engagement was to just share photos on Facebook. And for some pages, that’s still true. But when it comes to links, it used to be, you would share a photo and you would put the link in the caption of the photo. But now, Facebook actually says, “No, we want you to use the link preview that we provide for you.” And this is how they want you to now share links on Facebook.
00:10:32 So basically, what it is is you still have your intro or your caption to your link, then you have an image preview. And that’s pulled in by Facebook based on the link, the URL that you put in. And then you also get a link title and description, which you can edit. So you can change that if you don’t like what it says originally. But this basically is how Facebook wants you to share links on their platform now. So if you’re not doing it that way, give it a try.
00:10:59 Another do that comes straight from Facebook is to write longer posts for stickiness. And this actually makes a lot of sense. So this is a quote right from Facebook, basically just saying that if people are spending a lot of time on one story in their newsfeed, then chances are that was a good sign that that content is really relevant to them. So of course, if you have a longer post and people are stopping to read it, then Facebook is able to say, “Oh hey, this person was really interested in that content, we should show them more of that type of stuff.”
00:11:32 So as an example, so here’s a post that would be long for stickiness. So you can see here, this is actually a link with a really long description, and there’s a see more that you have to click to read the whole thing. So if you click it, you get this whole long description before this link. And this is actually great for a couple of different reasons. Number one, it’s long for that stickiness factor. But also, you have to click on see more in order to read the entire post. Now clicking on the see more is basically interaction, right? That’s engagement in Facebook’s eyes. So if you’re clicking on that link and then you’re also sticking around to read everything in that post, that basically tells Facebook, “Hey, I’m really interested in this post from this page.” And then Facebook is likely to show you more things from that page.
00:12:20 So, if you usually just write short and sweet updates on Facebook, experiment. See what happens if you’re writing longer stuff, if that makes people stick around more and engage more with your content.
00:12:34 Now let’s get into some don’ts, the things you do not want to do on Facebook. And again, a lot of these are coming right from Facebook itself, so these are worth paying attention to. So first of all, you don’t wanna be posting clickbaity links. And we can kind of, probably, most of us can imagine or think about what those are. So these are the kind of listicals that you see on Facebook and they’re titles like, “Oh my god, you won’t believe number four.” And you don’t know what the list is about, you have no idea what number four is, but you kind of want to click on it because you just want to know what it is that you won’t believe in number four.
00:13:11 But Facebook doesn’t really like these kind of clickbaity links because, again, they don’t tell you anything about what you’re about to read, so it could be something completely dumb and that you’re not interested in, but you’re gonna click on it anyway just because of the clickbaity title. So Facebook has been trying to get those out of the newsfeed more and more, so it’s just something you don’t really want to do. Plus, it’s annoying if you click on one and then it ends up being something really stupid that you don’t really want to read. It’s a waste of time, right?
00:13:41 Another don’t is don’t be too salesy. It can be really easy on Facebook to get really salesy, especially if you, you’re selling a product or a course or something like that. But the fact of the matter is, Facebook has ads for a reason, right? So a lot of people are kind of against Facebook ads, are paying to promote your page. And we’re not really gonna get into Facebook ads today because that really doesn’t have anything to do with content, but I will say that they’re effective. Here at Edgar, we pretty much only pay money to advertise ourselves on Facebook. Most of our marketing budget goes towards Facebook ads. So they definitely do work. But the fact of the matter is that there are Facebook ads, and they are separate from your Facebook posts.
00:14:25 So posts are supposed to be posts, and ads are supposed to be ads. So if you want to get really salesy, you should probably look into Facebook ads rather than getting really salesy right on your Facebook page.
00:14:37 Another don’t is to don’t explicitly ask people to like or share. If you are gonna ask people to, maybe tag a friend in a photo, like, let’s say it’s a pretty photo of a lake and you might want to say, “Oh, tag a friend that you would like to swim here with,” that’s one thing. But to be explicitly like, “Please like this photo if you like it,” or something like that, where you’re writing in all caps and you’re just begging people basically to like or share your photo, Facebook kind of frowns upon that. And honestly, it can get annoying for your audience as well if all you’re asking them to do is interact with something. Yes, it is proven that if you can subtly suggest that people interact with a piece of content, that they are more likely to do it. But if you’re being really annoying about it and really in people’s face about liking, sharing, commenting, then they’re not as likely to do it. So if you’re gonna do that be subtle about it. And I do have some examples of that later on in today’s webinar.
00:15:37 Another don’t is to drop the hashtags. Most people, I feel like aren’t using hashtags that much on Facebook anymore. But if you are, hashtags definitely work better on Twitter than they do on Facebook. So you know, it just kind of clutters up your Facebook posts, especially if you can remember some of your friends and family members who would put 20 hashtags in a Facebook status update. It’s messy and it’s annoying and they don’t really work as well as they do on Twitter.
00:16:07 The last thing, and this is more from Team Edgar than from Facebook, but don’t reuse something if it didn’t work the first time. So Edgar is basically built to help you reuse your best evergreen content on social media. So we’re definitely all about re sharing things that do really well and scheduling them out and that sort of thing. But if you share something once on Facebook and nobody engages with it and it’s just not doing well, don’t share it again or at least don’t share it again for a long time. Because chances are, if it didn’t work the first time, it’s not gonna work the second. So just remember that as well.
00:16:42 But let’s get out of the negativity and get back to some of those dos. So we have some more dos for you, and these are right from our team here at Edgar, so some things that we do for our social media that we find really works. So the first one is to do be consistent on Facebook. So this means that you don’t want to let days go by without posting. Now of course, how many times per day that you post, I can’t really give you a number there, how many times a a day you should post, because it’s gonna be different for every page, for every business, for every audience.
00:17:15 I know some pages might only post once a day. Others might post 10 times a day. And for some of those pages, it works if they’re posting 10 times a day. But it might not necessarily work for you. So you do need to kind of experiment to figure out what the best mix is or what the best frequency of posting is for your page. But I would say, in general, you should at least be posting once a day. Right? Because if people don’t hear from you or they don’t see stuff from you, and obviously, if you’re letting three or four days go by without posting, you’re not gonna be in anyone’s newsfeed. So people are just gonna forget about you. So you wanna be consistent with your posting, however many times a day you decide to post, if you say, “Okay, I’m gonna post twice a day on Facebook,” make sure you post twice a day on Facebook. And we use Edgar for that, obviously, because you can schedule out those posts so that you know you’ll be posting twice a day on Facebook if that’s what you decide to do. So consistency is really important for keeping those engagement numbers steady.
00:18:16 Another do is to let your voice and your personality shine through. This is a given for any social network. You should be doing this. But definitely on Facebook too, whether you have a brand voice that you’re personifying or whether it’s just you running your business and you’re the one doing all the posting, you can still let your personality shine through, even if it is a business page. Of course, the extent to which that personality comes through completely depends on your business. If you’re running your business just as a reflection of you, then you can probably let more of it come through. If you’re running a Facebook for a big corporation that’s a little bit more serious, then you have to play around with it and see what you can get away with as far as letting that voice come through. But we definitely try and do this at Edgar.
00:19:03 It doesn’t have to be really over the top, but if you read this update from Facebook, you can kind of get a sense for brand voice and the personality that we put behind Edgar. So you do definitely want to let that come through on Facebook.
00:19:17 Another do from us is to make sure you engage with people who engage with you. Because we call this, “Social media,” after all. You’re supposed to be talking to people and building relationships and just engaging. So if you’re posting a status or asking a question or posting a really nice photo or recipe or something and people are commenting on it or sharing it with their friends, make sure that you’re popping in at least once a day to see what people are saying. And granted, every single comment that somebody leaves on a photo or a link or something like that, not all of them are going to necessitate a response or a reply from you, but you can definitely go through and comment on a couple of those comments. You can like the comments that other people are leaving on your photos and links and that sort of thing, just basically to prove that you’re paying attention and that you’re there and that you appreciate that people are engaging with your stuff. Basically, if you can engage with people who are engaging, more people are likely to engage in the future just because they can see that you’re active and you really do care that they’re there.
00:20:23 Another do is to figure out the best times to post for that audience. So those people who are engaging with you, you want to make sure that they’re actually seeing the stuff that you post or at least having the best chance of seeing the stuff that you’re posting. The best way to do this is to use your Facebook insight. So I got a little screenshot for you here on the next slide. If you go into your Facebook Insights, one of the first things that you’ll see is this little graph and it shows you when your fans are online. Now up across the top, you’ll see the days and you can actually see which days of the week you have more of your fans online. You can also see at the bottom, this is the more important graph here, but this is where you can see the-
00:21:00 This is the more important graph here, but this where you can see the times of day that your audience tends to be online. Looking at our graph, we’re probably not going to post anything past like midnight because we get that huge dip in the nighttime. Since most of our audience is in the US and that’s when people are asleep. Conversely, we probably should be posting, it looks, between about 4:00 and 5:00 pm because that’s like the peak where the most people are online from our audience.
00:21:29 Do, just by using this graph, you can kind of get a good idea of when you might want to schedule those times to post on Facebook. If we decide we’re going to post twice a day, we might go ahead and post at like 1:00 pm and 5:00 pm because it looks like those are kind of the times when people are online the most. If you have an audience that’s maybe outside of your time zone, this graph can give you a really good idea of when they might be online.
00:21:52 Let’s say that you’re in LA, but you have a huge audience in London, then you probably won’t be posting inside your normal business hours because you’re doing to be posting for that audience, but this graph will be able to show you when they’re actually online so that you can plan accordingly. Another do from us, is to try a variety of content and see what your audience responds to. Once you figure out the best times to post, you’re going to have to experiment a little bit. This goes back to just, you know, Facebook always changing things, so you always want to be trying to something different, just to see what works and what doesn’t.
00:22:31 Again, you can use your insights for this. So, in that same tab, or one tab over, from when your fans are online, you can click over to post types. This is going to show you what types of posts are doing the best for you on Facebook. You can see here that for us, on our Edgar page, photo’s seem to do a lot better than links and status updates. Now, is this going to be true for every single page on Facebook? No, of course not. This is why you need to try different things and you need to pay attention to what works.
00:23:01 You want to pop into your insights maybe once a week, at least once every two weeks to kind of see what’s working and what’s not. Based on this, we should probably post more photos because that seems to be what people engage with the most and they get the best reach. Does that mean that we’re not going to post links or status updates? No, it just means that we might post more photos than the other things since those seem to work a little bit better. Definitely try a variety of content and then use your insights to find out what your audience actually likes and is responding to the best.
00:23:36 As you’re trying this different type of content, you definitely want to get visual. We definitely, you know, if you think about it, think of the sorts of things that catch your eye on Facebook. Chances are, it’s going to be photos, it’s going to be video, it’s going to be stuff that’s visual, rather than just big blocks of text. Here, you want to experiment with single photos, photo groups, videos, all that different sort of stuff. You know, you can upload multiple photos into a status update in Facebook and Facebook puts it into a little grid for you.
00:24:08 You can experiment with single photos, inspirational quotes seem to do really really well for a lot of pages on Facebook. You also might want to experiment with video. You might not think your audience is interested in video, but depending on who you ask, it seems like the bigger the page, the most successful a video actually does as content. If you look at a page with like 10,000 followers, if they post a video, chances are it’s actually going to get a decent amount of engagement.
00:24:37 Regardless of your pages size, though, it might be something you can play around with, just to experiment with because again, you never know, and you’re never going to know unless you try it. Definitely get visual and try some different things. And then again, use your insights to find out what’s actually working. Another do from us, is to share other people’s content on Facebook, or what we call OPC. This can be just anything that was created by someone else. That could be links, it could be quotes, it could be photos, just anything that you find online that is not created by you. It’s not your product, it’s not your blog, it’s from somebody else.
00:25:19 What you want to think about when you’re looking for this type of content, is obviously, keep your audience in mind. You want to find things that would entertain and interest them. It doesn’t always have to be about your business. I have a really good example here. A few months ago, when we were doing another webinar, somebody asked in the chat, she was like, “You know, I own a brick and mortar business and we sell flavored popcorn.” And she said, “Do you think that we should maybe try sharing some movie reviews on our Facebook page or even writing our own movie reviews?”
00:25:52 A lot of us in the webinar were like, “Yeah, you know what? That sounds like a really cool idea because what goes together better than movies and popcorn?” Even though it’s not going to be related to her popcorn business directly, it’s still kind of tangentially related because it’s movies and when you think of movies, you usually think of popcorn and vice versa. So, that’s just kind of … you can get a little bit creative with it and just think of things that would interest your audience and then find other content that’s related to that.
00:26:25 You can also kind of not necessarily cheat off your neighbor’s paper, but definitely pay attention to what other people in your niche’ or in your industry are doing. If you see other pages in your niche that are sharing something, whether it’s a link or a photo all at once, then you should probably try sharing it too. Facebook does seem to give weight to things that a lot of people are sharing at the same time. If you see, let’s say for example, you see like seven different travel pages sharing a link from BuzzFeed about like, you know, the ten most beautiful places in the world, or something like that, and all these people are sharing it at once, and you have a travel page, chances are if you share it, it’s probably going to do pretty well because Facebook has seen all these other people share it before you.
00:27:12 It’s worth trying. It’s not going to work every single time, but if you’re kind of keeping an eye on what other similar pages to you are doing, it can give you kind of hints to things that you can try as well. Facebook actually gives you a way to do this. There’s this feature in Facebook called, pages to watch. If you go to your insights and scroll all the way down to the bottom of that very first page, you’ll see this. It just says, pages to watch. It says, “Compare the performance of your page and posts with similar pages on Facebook.”
00:27:45 You can add … I’m not exactly sure how many pages you can watch at one time, but it’s like at least ten, I want to say. You can add all these different pages that are similar to yours. You can see here, that you’ll see the total number of page likes. You’ll see how many times they posted in a week and you’ll see their total engagement. If you’re kind of looking at this and you see that one page has engagement that’s like off the charts, so for example, here. Social examiner, they don’t have the most page likes on this list. They are posting the most frequently, but their engagement is like off the charts.
00:28:21 They’ve got like 10,000 people engaged just in one week. I would probably be like, I wonder what they’re doing to get all of that engagement? So then, I would pop over to their page, look at the sorts of things that they’re sharing, looking at what they’re audience is actually responding to and then using that to inform my decisions on what I’m going to share on my page. I’m not saying you should completely copy what another page is doing, but it definitely can just make you a little bit smarter about what you’re trying on your page, and maybe give you some ideas for something to do that you didn’t even think of before. Definitely take advantage of this feature, if you’re not already because it is really useful.
00:29:03 Now that we’ve gone through all the do’s and don’ts, I want you to think back to those five reasons that people share content. Remember, we said that the key is to make it more about them than you. I have a couple of examples, just really quickly to show you. On the left-hand side, we actually have a post from Edgar. This is a link to our blog. It’s something we wrote after we’d been in business for a year. It’s just basically like, lessons that we learned in our first year. You’ll see in the description, it says, you know, “Here’s what we didn’t see coming and what you should know before you launch.”
00:29:39 Here, we’re trying to make it more about the person reading this update, than about us. I mean, yes, it’s a link to our blog post, but we’re also saying, “Hey, you could probably learn something from this too if you’re planning on launching a business.” If we go over to the top right. The Coca-Cola status update. So, you know Coke has been doing this whole share a Coke thing were they’ve got like the names on the cans and bottles and that sort of thing. Well, this is a cool thing that they did.
00:30:04 They said that “We’ve partnered with Google to help you discover facts about your name and then share them with friends.” So, it’s kind of cool. It’s still related to their share a Coke campaign, but it’s actually more about, hey, do you want to like learn what your name means or figure out some cool stuff about it, go to this link. It’s really more about the person reading that status, then about Coke’s campaign. Lastly, the bottom right here, finding the universe, is a travel page on Facebook with like almost like half a million fans, I think.
00:30:35 Every single Sunday, he shares a sunset photo and also every single Sunday, he asks people to share their sunset photos like in the comments under his. So, this is a great example of how to be subtle about asking people to do something on a Facebook post. So, you know, yes, he’s sharing this awesome sunset photo, but then he’s saying, “Hey, why don’t you post your sunset photos below.” So, he’s asking for engagement, but he’s doing it in a way that makes it more about the person who’s going to share a photo of their favorite sunset, rather than about him and his sunset photo. It’s a really actually smart way to go about it. Those posts on his page, do always get tons of engagement.
00:31:20 I threw a lot at you. But now, it’s time for the slightly more interactive version of our hangout today. We are going to bring in Tom, who is the voice of Edgar on social media. If you’ve ever, you know, read some of our tweets, or some of our emails, and just been like, “Hey, this Edgar dude sounds pretty cool.” Most of that is thanks to Tom. So, Tom, are you here?
00:31:43 I am here. I’m here and I’m not really as cool as Edgar is.
00:31:48 Well, you’re pretty close. Basically, what we’re going to do is, Tom is going to go through first some bad examples of Facebook posts, so some examples of posts that aren’t really that great. And then, show how that they could be made better and tell you what’s wrong with the first version. As we go through the bad versions, definitely see if you can spot what’s wrong with the examples, and feel free to hop into the chat and kind of talk to us about what you think is wrong, and just all of the stuff that Tom’s going to go over. But, I will throw it over to you, Tom.
00:32:22 All right. We are going to just look at a few Facebook status updates that aren’t as good as they could be, right? Ones that are doing something that Facebook doesn’t like, or that Facebook users don’t necessarily like either. We’re going to throw one up on the screen. You guys in the chat will be able to chime in with what you think each update is getting wrong, and then we’ll go over how the update could be improved. Once you’re ready, we’re going to go ahead and get started here.
00:32:55 All right. Now, can everybody see what’s on the screen? I know that we were getting that switched over here. All right, I’m seeing some people in the chat saying that everything is working the way it should. So, we got an easy example here to start that Amanda’s going to put up on the screen. Cookie monster says, “Click the like button if you like cookies.” And again, I’m sorry, not going to do the Cookie Monster voice for that. I know I should.
00:33:28 This seems pretty harmless, right? What could Cookie Monster be doing wrong? Oh my gosh, you guys are so fast. You’re already getting it right. Cookie Monster is like baiting. Like-baiting is actually what Facebook calls it when you’re asking people to like your stuff. He’s explicating asking his followers to engage with his post. This is not valuable in the way that the sunset guy is because Cookie Monster just wants his engagement rate to go up. This isn’t really about the user.
00:33:53 The problem is, this is super low-value content. Facebook doesn’t like it when you post stuff like this. Let’s go ahead Amanda and we’re going to take a look at how he could’ve done this post better. All right, so now we have an example of how this post could be better. Professional Cookie Monster has the right idea. He wants engagement too, but he’s getting by actually getting involved with his followers. He’s asking a question that gets a discussion going, which is more rewarding for his fans, and it’s a type of engagement that Facebook wants to see. Now, we’re just going to take one second here and make sure that our video is working properly because it seems like some of you guys are stuck looking at my face and that is just, nobody needs that. Hey guys. Thanks for bearing with us. I am sorry that you stuck looking at my mug here. We are just doing a little bit of troubleshooting.
00:35:14 All right guys. Sorry about the trouble. We’re going to try this again. I’m going to have to take over from Tom because for some reason we can’t get the slides to work when Tom is actually talking. Tom’s going to supplement me in the chat. I’m sorry, you’re not going to be able to hear his silky smooth voice anymore. But, we’ll still get through these examples for you.
00:36:22 The next example that we have for you, or wait. This is still Cookie Monster. We’ve already gone over that. For the next one, here’s the bad example. So, feel free to tell us in the chat why you think this is bad. Probably pretty obvious here as well. The reason that this is not such a great post is that it’s clickbaity, right? This title here, The Craziest Thing to Happen Ever. And the description is just like, this video is going to make you go, oh my God. You have no idea what this post is actually about or what this video is going to show you. You know, maybe that’s going to make you want to click, but maybe not because you’re like, I have no idea what I’m going to see.
00:37:04 A better version of this post would be something like this, where you actually have a headline that tells you what the video is about. So, it’s how to cure an ice cream headache in seconds. That still sounds pretty interesting, but it’s not clickbaity anymore. The description, again, it gives you a little better idea of what you’re going to see in the video. Facebook definitely prefers this to those clickbaity titles because again, yes, you want to kind of entice people to click on your link, or video, or whatever it is you’re sharing, but you don’t necessarily want to trick them into it. Facebook kind of frowns upon that a little bit.
00:37:46 Let’s move on to the next example. This one is a little bit trickier, so we are getting a slightly more difficult as we go along, but let’s see what you guys can do with this one. So, here’s the not so great example, so take a second, look at this. See if you can figure out what’s wrong, quote-unquote with this post. If you’re looking at it, you might actually say, “It doesn’t really look too bad.” But, here’s the thing, this is written more like an ad, right? So, this is something that would be posted on a page. Remember what we were saying before about how a post should be a post and an ad should be an ad.
00:38:27 In this case, this is a little bit too salesy for a regular Facebook post. How would they fix it? This isn’t really a post from Planet Fitness, we completely like made all this stuff up too, I should mention. But, so how would we fix something like this? Well, you actually pay for an ad. So, here’s what that same post would look like as a Facebook ad. It’s not any different. It’s still the same exact thing, it’s just now, it’s clearly a sponsored ad on Facebook. This is really what Facebook prefers. If you’re going to get really salesy, if you want to put something up that is an ad, pay for an ad because an ad is an ad, and a post should be a post. In this case, Planet Fitness should’ve just gone ahead and paid for an ad in this case.
00:39:14 Our last example that we have is perhaps not quite as tricky, but still kind of tricky. Let’s see what you guys can do with it. The bad example here, here you go. You know, we’ve got a vice president Biden and Putin here in a photo with a link. What do you guys think is not correct with this post? I know Tom is in the chat with you guys right now. If you said that it is kind of fear-mongering, misleading, perhaps. You would be right because here is what the actual version of this post would be like. Like, oh, they were like joking around and somebody put a funny caption and was like, oh like, a thumb war.
00:39:59 This is the actual story or would be the actual story, whereas, the first version actually makes it sound like we’re going to war or something like that, which is really misleading. It’s not necessarily one of the do’s or don’ts that we went over today but should be kind of self-explanatory. You don’t necessarily want to like instill fear in needlessly in your followers, or just put stuff up that’s really misleading. That’s something that people complain about in the media all the time, so you certainly don’t want to add to that at all.
00:40:31 When you are creating posts, just keep that in mind. You don’t want to make things, take things out of context or make it so that people could easily take things out of context because again, the bad example is not only misleading, but a little clickbaity as well because you’re like, oh my God, we’re declaring war, what? And then, you go to it and find out that that’s not actually the case at all. It’s misleading, and clickbaity, and just definitely not something you want to be doing on Facebook. Again, I’m sure Tom is giving you some more commentary in the chat there about these examples, but these are just kind of like a quick way to kind of wrap your head around some of these tips that we’ve been giving you a little bit better, so the good versus bad. Of course, these aren’t real world examples, but you probably can definitely apply them to things that you’ve seen on Facebook or maybe even some status updates that you’ve written yourself. We are going to go ahead and wrap up here so that we can get to that Q and A at the end.
00:41:32 Basically, to just briefly wrap up what we’ve gone over today. First and foremost, you want to keep your audience in mind. Like we’ve been saying this whole time, you need to make your content feel like it’s more about them than you, even though it is your content, and it might be about your site, or your product, or your business. You want to make sure that your audience can relate to it in some way because if they can, then they’re more likely to share it. Secondly, don’t be annoying. Don’t use those clickbaity titles. Don’t be begging people.
00:42:00 … be annoying. Don’t use those click=baity titles. Don’t be begging people to share your stuff. Basically, don’t do anything that you would be annoyed by if somebody else did it on Facebook. Third, make sure you remember to experiment and try new things. Like we’ve said, Facebook’s algorithm is changing all the time, and the only way to figure out what’s going to work and what’s not is to try different things. So if you’ve never tried posting a video on Facebook before, try it and see what happens. If you usually only share one type of photos, try sharing something else.
00:42:36 Just experiment with it and try new things, and as you’re doing that, make sure to just do more of what works and ditch what doesn’t. Don’t be afraid to stop doing something on Facebook if it’s just not working for you. It might take a while to hit that sweet spot and figure out what it is that your audience does respond to. So if you’re trying stuff and it’s just not working, don’t be afraid to try something else because a lot of it is just going to be trial and error until you figure out what works.
00:43:05 So, before we go ahead and hop into the Q&A, we have mentioned Edgar quite a few times today. So if you’re not currently an Edgar user, Edgar is just a social media management tool that does help you be more consistent with your social media and get more mileage out of all your evergreen status updates, and those were a couple things we talked about today as far as Facebook. If you’re interested in trying it out, we do have a 14-day free trial right now, no credit card or anything required. You could just head over to meetedgar.comm/freetrial, if you want to sign up and check it out. Just kind of as a little thank you for joining us today in our webinar.
00:43:47 But now that that’s all out of the way, we definitely do want to leave time for discussion. We have about 15 minutes or so, which is perfect. If you want to pop into the chat, and I know that you’ve been sending in some questions throughout this whole webinar, which is awesome, so we will get to those now. Also, if you just want to tell us what sort of things have you tried on Facebook that have worked really well or maybe what things you’ve tried that haven’t really well. If you’d like to tell us, feel free to do so in the chat.
00:44:13 If you have any more questions for us, throw those in there as well, and we’re going to get to answering those now. I’m just going to minimize this although I will leave the screen up so you guys can still see it, but I want to be able to see the chat. Let’s jump right into some of these questions that we’ve gotten throughout the webinar, and some of these are a little bit easier. So, let’s see. Shauna was asking about earlier some tips for nonprofits. That’s a really good question, Shauna. And again, it just comes down to … It depends obviously what type of nonprofit you’re talking about.
00:44:55 So if we’re talking about like a church or a charity, there’s probably going to be some focus for that nonprofit whether it’s whatever you’re raising money for, or the focus of it. You can definitely use that topic to think tangentially and find things to share that are related to that. For example, I don’t know if your nonprofit is like … I don’t know. Let’s say a hospital or some sort of medical facility. You can certainly go out and find interesting scientific articles about stuff that’s happening in the world of medicine.
00:45:31 You can go out there and find really inspiring stories about people, like beating diseases or things like that. So it doesn’t necessarily just have to be about your nonprofit. It could be anything related to the topic that your nonprofit is raising money for. Emily asked earlier, “Does the 80-20 rule still apply for content?” Meaning that 80% of your content should be social, and 20% should be a call to action. I think again, it just comes down to you need to experiment and see what your audience likes. I would say that 80/20 probably is still a good breakdown, because again, especially on Facebook, you don’t want to get too salesy.
00:46:17 You don’t want to be just like really, really getting on people trying to sell them stuff, especially on Facebook. That’s not really what most people are there for. They put with the ads because they’re there. But yeah, I would say that’s probably still a good mix for your content. But again, you probably want to experiment with it because you might be able to get away with a little more than 20% of calls to action or promos depending on your audience and depending on why they’re following your page.
00:46:51 Mariano is asking … Oh, so this is a question based on when you’re sharing a link preview on Facebook. “Does it influence your reach whether you still keep the URL in the caption of the post or not?” That’s a good question. I honestly do not know the answer to that one. We, sometimes, will leave our shortened Bitly links in the caption as well as use the link preview. But I know a lot of people just think that looks cluttered because you already have the link there once.
00:47:21 So I think that’s more just personal preference, and there’s really no … As long as you’re actually pulling in that link preview, leaving the URL in the caption, I don’t think it necessarily hurts you. But again, maybe that’s something you want to experiment with. Maybe try it for a week and see if you get any results from that. That’s something we haven’t tried. Yeah, and so, if you didn’t know, you can remove that URL from a link preview in Facebook just in case you didn’t know that. Let’s see. Marissa was asking, “Should you post the same type of content at a certain time each day? For example, a new blog post at 5:00 PM versus different types of content each time?”
00:48:02 With Edgar, we definitely … The way that Edgar is set up, you actually can schedule specific types of content for a certain time. So it would be the same type of content at the same time. So, on Mondays at 5:00, it would be a blog post, and at Tuesdays at 5:00, it might be a quote. But for each day of the week, for each week, it might be the same. But again, I think there is something to be said for consistency. So if you’re always publishing your new blog post at 5:00 PM on a Tuesday, then your audience might just get conditioned to expect a new blog post from you at 5:00 on Tuesdays.
00:48:43 In that case, it might actually be really smart to stay consistent with that. But it depends what kind of content it is, and again, I’m going to go back to my standard, “You should just experiment with it and see how your audience responds.” Let’s see. Any other questions here? Tom and Stacey, feel free to send me some more as they’re coming through, because I see they’re coming through really fast. Definitely appreciate how active you guys have been in the discussion and sending us questions. Let’s see. I’m just going to scroll through here and see what else you guys are saying.
00:49:25 Here’s another question. “As a composer, the line between my professional page and my personal page is blurry. Should I treat the two differently to get more engagement?” That is a good question. Basically, what we usually tell people to do at Edgar is that you want to keep your personal and your business separate. For some people, like if you’re an author or kind of like a public figure who you really it’s hard for you to separate personal from the business, that’s one thing, and that’s a challenge that it’s just something that you need to figure out how you want to balance that on your own.
00:50:03 But in general, if you’re running a business, and you should just be … You should have your personal profile that’s just for your friends and family, and then your business page is actually for your business. I’m not saying that you won’t ever share things between the two. For example, I have a travel blog, and I have a page for my travel blog. But a lot of times, I’ll share links on my blog page and on my personal Facebook page just because I know my friends and family like to read about my travels too.
00:50:32 But in that case, I tend to keep all of my blog-related stuff on my page and not really on my personal profile because I figure my friends don’t always want to be hearing about that. If they do, I’d rather them follow my page than be looking at my personal profile all the time. So, it is going to be a balance in your case it sounds like, because if that line is a little bit blurred, you probably should pick one or the other to focus on. If you find that it’s more your friends and family who are following your personal page that seem to interact more, maybe you want to focus more there and not so much on the page that you have or vice versa.
00:51:17 Meranda’s asking, “Any good tips for the best way to schedule video?” That is a good question, and you’re right. So you said most of our videos are on YouTube, but I know that sharing them native on Facebook looks better, and that is true. Honestly, I haven’t found a great solution for scheduling videos on Facebook yet simply because if you upload through a third-party app or you schedule a link from YouTube, Facebook treats it differently than if you just upload natively. So, honestly, I would say just keep uploading them through Facebook if you can, or sometimes, here’s what I often do.
00:51:54 I will make a teaser clip. So maybe if I have a video that’s two minutes long, I’ll make a little teaser that’s maybe 15 seconds long. I’ll upload that to Facebook because when you upload a video to Facebook, there is actually an option to do, like at the end of the video, have a link that says, “Watch more.” You can link them to the full video on YouTube. So sometimes, I’ll do that because it still will get people to watch that little clip. Then anybody who actually watches until the end might actually go and click through to YouTube.
00:52:26 So that’s kind of what I’ve been experimenting with. But again, video on Facebook is relatively new the way that they’re favoring native video now. It’s just something you have to try and see what will work for you. I know that’s been my answer for a lot of these things, but that really just is the best thing to do sometimes. I would maybe try making a little teaser and then linking to the full video on YouTube if you find that most of your videos are going to YouTube anyway, because of course, YouTube is its own social network, and YouTube is the second largest search engine next to Google.
00:53:01 So you don’t want to necessarily ignore YouTube for Facebook. So if you can find a way to make them play nice together, that’s probably worth it. Another question, “Should you include Facebook ads in your content frequency? For example, if you post twice a day on Facebook, like we were talking about, and you’re running ads. Would you count that towards your total per day?” Good question. I would say I probably wouldn’t count it towards my total, but it also depends what type of ads that you’re running. If you’re running, let’s say, ads to get people to like your page, or if you’re running ads, let’s say, to your sales page on your website, which is what we do at Edgar.
00:53:43 We run ads to our Meet Edgar page to get people to sign up. We certainly don’t count those in our daily sharing numbers, mostly because they’re going to show up in different people’s news feeds based on who you’re targeting in that ad. So we might have an ad that’s only targeting men, age 35 to 45. So that’s, as far as our audience goes, that’s probably a small fraction of the people who are following our page. So yes, people are going to see that in their newsfeed but not necessarily everyone who is following our page is going to see that.
00:54:20 In that case, you’re not going to count that in your posting frequency just because based on how you targeted it, it might not actually show up to any of your current users. So, I think it’s safe in most cases that you don’t need to worry about that affecting your posting frequency. The only time when it would maybe affect it is if you’re boosting posts on Facebook. So if you’re using that boost post button, because then that’s something that you’ve already posted to your page that you’re going to be then putting into an ad.
00:54:51 But that’s a little bit different because you’ve already posted it, so it’s not like it’s an extra thing happening, if that makes sense. Rachel is asking our guideline’s different for B2B and B2C companies. That is a good question. I would say probably not really. Again, it does of course depend on your audience. But at Edgar, I would say we’re definitely … We’re B2B. We’re selling to small businesses basically. But these are definitely all the tactics that we use, and I think that they are definitely the same whether you’re B2B or B2C, especially when it comes to some of the dos and don’ts because it doesn’t really matter what you’re selling or what kind of content that you’re posting.
00:55:35 You still need to keep the same things in the back of your mind that if you’re B2B, you still want to make it about how your product or your course or whatever it is can help whoever’s reading that Facebook post. So even if it’s like another business that you’re trying to sell to, you’re still trying to solve a problem for them. And so, therefore, your content can still be more about them than about you. And of course, even if you are more B2B than B2C, you can still share stuff that’s not … It doesn’t have to be salesy. So yeah, I would say it’s not that much different content-wise or based on the tips that we’ve gone over today.
00:56:17 Wow, you guys are so awesome with all this chat and questions. I think we have time for maybe one or two more, so we will … Okay. Got another one here. Question about hashtags. “Does Facebook actually downgrade your post if you use a hashtag or we just shouldn’t do it because it looks messy?” Again, Facebook keeps all of their algorithms secrets very close to their chest. So, I can’t say with any certainty whether they actually would ding a post if it has a hashtag in it. I just know hashtags don’t … You use them on Twitter really for organization and to categorize what you’re posting, and people tend to search for hashtags on Twitter a lot.
00:57:04 Whereas on Facebook, people don’t really search for hashtags. So, using them on the post isn’t necessarily always going to be that useful for people. If you’re using a lot, like if you just use maybe one in a post, not too bad. But you get a lot of people on Facebook that are using six or seven in a very short status update, and it just looks really messy. Kaitlyn asked, “How often do you guys do these webinars?” Great question. We usually do at least one a month, sometimes two a month. This is actually the second time that we’re doing this Facebook webinar, so we’re really excited that so many people showed up to join us today.
00:57:48 We have in the past done webinars on Twitter. We’ve done webinars on how to get more followers on content curation, and we do have some more coming up as well. Since you signed up for this webinar today, we will send you notifications, like when we plan the next webinar. So if you want to come to another one, you’ll definitely be able to do that. Everybody here today will also get a link to the replay for today’s webinar as well as the slides from today. Somebody is asking about the free trial URL. I can go back to that slide here for you.
00:58:27 It’s just meetedgar.com/freetrial, if you’re interested in that.yeah, of course, if you have suggestions for future webinars for us or just any questions that we didn’t really get to today either about Edgar or social media in general. You can feel free to send us an email at [email protected], and we can certainly answer any Edgar-related questions or any social media questions that aren’t too difficult, because yeah, we do definitely try and do as much teaching as we can about social media as we go along. I think though we have pretty much … I know we didn’t get to everybody’s question, and I do apologize, but we just have so many coming in.
00:59:16 I know Tom and Stacy were going through the chat as we went along to answer questions. So hopefully, you guys were paying attention as well. One last question from Rachel asking, “How many people are on our marketing team?” Our team at Edgar is really small, like just the entire company is only about 14 people right now. We have one marketing lead, one person who handles Facebook ads, and then two writers, and then me who handles webinars and some other stuff like that. So, actually, a pretty small team when it comes down to it, but we love doing this sort of stuff, especially the webinars to get you guys behind the scenes. It’s not only of Edgar but just social media in general.
01:00:01 Thank you so, so much for joining us today, and keep an eye out on your email when you’ll get the link to the replay and the slides. And also, just for info on future webinars because we’d love to see you again, feel free to tweet at us if you had a good time today. We’re just @MeetEdgar on Twitter as well. So, thank you so much and have a great rest of your week guys and happy Tuesday. Bye.
