You put a ton of effort into coming up with thoughtful, valuable content to share with your Facebook fans, but it’s just not getting the engagement you were hoping for. You start to second-guess yourself: where did you go wrong?
The problem might not be with the content itself, but the way you are presenting it. Before you release your clever content out into the world for sharing, consider these common mistakes that could be dulling your voice’s shine:
You’re Too Wordy
Facebook isn’t meant for publishing blog-worthy statuses, but it is the best place to grab people’s attention as they scroll through their page. While it’s perfectly fine to link your audience to a spot where they can get the full scoop on whatever topic you are writing about, keep the text in your Facebook posts to a couple sentences or less. The content that gets the best engagement, believe it or not, is a mere 40 character long! That’s barely enough room to write a headline, so if you do want to write a bit more, refer to the next paragraph:
There Are No Visual Breaks Incorporated Into Your Text
If you’re writing more than one sentence to accompany your visual content (we’ll get to that part next), break your sentences up with spacing. It’s easier on the eyes, and when your text flows with ease, your audience will be more likely to read it and engage with it. This simple trick will help with making your message more digestible.
Your Images Are Sized Incorrectly
You might have a perfect photo picked out for your content, but if it isn’t sized to Facebook’s standards, it’s going to look awkward when your post shows up in your audience’s newsfeed. If you want to ensure that your posts show up correctly, use free tools like Canva to create your images. Canva allows you to create image templates for almost every social media channel that are already optimized to show up correctly on social media.
You’re Not Deleting Links Out Of Your Posts
When you use a hyperlink in a Facebook post, you can delete it out of the post after your content has populated and guess what? Nothing disappears except the actual text in the link!
You don’t have to leave that messy link in the body of your post for Facebook to remember a website. When we see bright blue, underlined links in our feed, our brains subconsciously associate that with spam. Not only it is visually distracting, it’s redundant; we don’t need to see the URL we are visiting if we can click it in a post!
Creating good content is hard work, so don’t let minor details like these undermine your best material! If you follow these guidelines, you’ll be well on your way to making sure your finest content always looks its best.