When it comes to Facebook content, one thing we always hear from clients is, “I have no idea what to post to Facebook.”
Or, “I have nothing to post to Facebook.”
While you may not know what to post, trust me, there are plenty of types of content you can post to try to capture your community’s interest — and entice engagement!
Use this quick tip guide, with six tips for creating better Facebook content, to ensure you never have to wonder what to post again.
6 Ways To Create Amazing Facebook Content
Growing your community on Facebook is kind of like becoming a butterfly … it can be a daunting or arduous process, but once it’s complete it is a thing of beauty.
If you stick with the quick tips listed below, the metamorphosis may not be so bad.
Use these 6 tips to create better Facebook content.Click To Tweet
1) Gain with the ‘usefulness advantage’
Want to know the biggest secret of all?
Most brands don’t know what to post because they don’t know what their audience wants.
To be successful on Facebook you have to be able to understand the needs of your best customer (or best would-be customer).
It is often hard for companies to grasp that on Facebook you aren’t necessarily competing with other companies like yours … you’re competing with your potential customers’ friends and family … not to mention pop culture news and puppy videos!
When it comes to offering value, think of creating snackable Facebook content like:
- Tips
- Hints
- Hacks
- Insights
- Problem solvers
- Breaking news
Don’t make it all about you, but do make it relevant to your brand’s industry.
R&R Web Design is a great example of using relevant breaking news as a way to keep community members loyal to their page on Facebook.
They are my go-to source for Facebook scams, updates and other SEO or WordPress updates.
Here’s an example of one of their “scam alert” posts:
Again, if you know your audience, think about taking their most-mentioned pain points and answering them in as many ways, and as often, as you can.
2) Post often, but don’t overdo it
Too many times you’ll see the “experts” telling to you post 3-5 times a day when actually that advice can really hurt you!
In 2014, we warned about posting too much on Facebook and how more Facebook content can actually cause a decline in your engagement.
HubSpot’s recent benchmark study is still proving our case:
“Companies with less than 10,000 followers that post more than 60 times a month receive 60% fewer clicks per post than those companies that post 5 or fewer times a month.”
We’ve seen this correlation when comparing our enterprise clients with our smaller clients.
In fact, one larger client of ours who has nearly 200,000 Fans on Facebook has seen some posts garner 25,000 in organic reach on entertainment-type posts!
*Remember that this is showcasing organic content … we’ll get to paid content in a bit.
3) SHOW versus tell
With many of the new improvements revolving around pictures and visual elements, it is more important than ever to use visuals to aid your Facebook content.
In fact, one of the biggest organic types of content we see taking off for our clients is what we call “BTS” Facebook content, or “behind-the-scenes” content.
Think of BTS content as “people content” — it’s telling your story with visuals of actual people, not relying on corporate speak, logos, or robotic messaging.
In our How To Master Behind-The-Scenes Content post we outline five ideas to aid with your BTS content:
- Put your people in focus
- Innovate with tradition
- Showcase products and services (and then some!)
- Give a sneak peek
- Leverage visual social platforms
Playing off of tip #3, think about your products IRL (in real life) if at all possible.
What I mean is, showcase your product as a lifestyle shot, not as the product itself.
Look at this example from Lowes, they aren’t selling the caulk, they’re sharing a valuable tip (#1 above!) along with a video to bring caulking your bathroom top of mind:
Emulate Lowes by creating Facebook content that is:
- Helpful
- Short and sweet (6 seconds here!)
- Visual (videos are kicking arse and taking names on Facebook right now!)
- Easily consumable and oh-so-shareable
Lowes has also used our 5th piece of advice on mastering BTS content by leveraging Vine to create an engaging Facebook post.
Smart.
4) Make the ask
Calls to action (CTAs) are shown to increase click-through-rates online and on social media.
So don’t be afraid, ask for what you want …
- “Click the link to read our blog post.”
- “Comment below and tell us how you feel about XYZ.”
We’ve got 40 calls-to-action you can use for Facebook to help spark more engagement on Facebook and make sure your content is actionable.
5) Make data-driven decisions
It goes without saying, but if you’re aiming to do #1-#4 you have to embrace a strategy to continuously post Facebook content your audience wants to see.
I highly recommend using a content calendar to ensure you’re organized and ready to go each day.
More important than being organized is making sure you use data-driven decisions to create the best content you can.
You can do that by using your social media analytics dashboard to hone in on your most-popular content.
Here’s a look at our top three Facebook posts over the last 30 days from our Facebook Report in Sprout Social (our absolute favorite, most highly-recommended social platform!):
By monitoring our top posts closely, we can understand what wording works, which types of posts (links, photos, videos, text only) perform best, which content sparks more engagement or shares, etc.
If you don’t have an analytics platform, no worries.
Use Facebook Insights to pull “post level data” for your reporting period and see how each post performed individually.
When you have a grouping of great content, figure how can you can continue to produce similar content over the coming days/weeks/months.
6) Punch up posts with ad dollars
I cannot express how important it is to consider using Facebook ads or boosts to increase the reach of your content.
Without ads, Facebook has said that organic content (on average) will be shown to a small portion of your fanbase. Like, 6% or less small.
Ouch!
While we’ve seen organic engagement get much higher reach, it is very difficult to do.
That’s the bad news.
The good news?
With a small budget (we consider $ 300/month pretty reasonable), a dedicated advertising specialist, and some serious targeting, you can definitely ensure your Facebook content is doing its job when it comes to marketing and selling your brand.
Putting It All Together
These 6 tips are almost too easy when it comes to creating Facebook content, don’t you think?
At the very least, #1-#5 can be done by digging deep and creating calculated content.
Consider looking back on this list during the next time you “don’t have anything to post on Facebook.”
Is there anything you think I should add when it comes to Facebook content? Let me know in the comments below!
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