Is your Facebook page optimized? Are you missing opportunities because you don’t have something set up quite right? You could be getting more out of Facebook with just a few quick adjustments to your Facebook page and your posting strategy. Here are 4 quick things that you can do to get more out of your Facebook page.
1. Link Your Profile to Your Page
I see many people who don’t have their Facebook profile properly linked to their Facebook page. You want to make sure your friends and personal connections can easily find your page and business just in case they are trying to refer business to you.
In this case, the person had an “official” Facebook page but the profile was linked to a “community” Facebook page. When someone types in the name of a business as their employer but doesn’t link it officially to the page, Facebook creates a “community page” that doesn’t tie to the page and doesn’t allow posting. Now, people can actually like that community page and you aren’t getting “credit” for those likes on your own page – the horror!
To get rid of this linkage on your profile, edit your about section and then delete the community page.
Now, add a position to your work and education section and start typing the name of your Facebook page. You should see the page in the drop-down menu to select it.
2. Add Your Website in Your About Section
You want people to easily click to your website to find out more about you. Sometimes your website address can be a bit hidden in your about section and you don’t want people to struggle to find it.
The “short description” area in your about section is the part that shows up the front of your Facebook page.
You can actually write more characters in the about section than actually show up on the front of your timeline so that some of the words may be cut off. Keep the blurb (including the website address) to about 175 characters max to avoid this. To edit the short description, go to edit page, update page info, and navigate to the short description.
3. Change Your Posting Strategy
We’ve all noticed that the reach of our posts has changed. Unfortunately, photos and posts with links are not getting the reach that they used to which means that they don’t have the potential to get as much interaction as a text-only post.
So if you have been posting more photo and link posts, it’s time to add in more text. But images and links can still be quite engaging so you can’t abandon those posts completely. I’ve been starting to advise people post around 40% of their total posts as text, 40% photos (maybe with a link in the status area as well), and 20% Links. If videos are part of your strategy, add those into the mix where appropriate.
One thing you can do to have a link post have the reach of a text post is to post the link in the status area just as you would normally do but then delete the link preview. Now the post will get the same reach of a text-only post but have a link embedded in the text area to drive traffic.
But don’t take my word for this – do your own testing on your own page – see point #4.
4. Set up some posting experiments
We get into ruts. We post sporadically. We are all rushed. But it’s important to find out what the ideal types of posts, the ideal number of posts, and the ideal times to post are for our own personal audience. And those numbers can change. And sometimes people suggest a certain type of post (or ratio of posts) that doesn’t work as well with your own audience. So we need to be doing continual testing for ourselves.
First, look into your Facebook insights to get some good ideas about what types of posts your audience likes. Under the posts section, look at the “best post types” to see what works. On my page, I see that status posts have been working the best lately. But that needs to be tested further.
If you normally post 1 time per day, try upping your posting to 3 times per day for 1 week and measuring the results. Or if you post a text post and a link post, try posting all text posts for a day at different times and measuring the performance of those posts. Then post all photo posts for a day at different times an measuring those results.
Don’t let someone else tell you what is best for your audience, do your own experimentation.
As Facebook constantly changes, we know we must constantly change to keep up. Sometimes the little tweaks can make the biggest differences. And the nice thing about these tweaks is that they are easy and quick to implement.
Have you made a quick tweak to your page that has made a big difference? Tell us in the comments below! And hope to see you at New Media Expo in January! (Editor’s note: Andrea will be speaking about Facebook at NMX, so make sure you have your ticket to the show.)
