Social Tips And Best Practices
Tips for using social media to your advantage
Embedded Files
Having a manual touch on your Facebook pages allows you an opportunity to connect and engage with your readers in a manner and a place that feels natural to them. Even if your pages are on AutoPost, there are opportunities to sprinkle them with a manual presence that shows readers there's a person behind the page.
Some editors choose to manually run their Facebook pages, which allows for a more customized experience for both editor and fans. If you choose to run a page manually, it will require a plan of action.
Make a plan: Time management is key. It’s important to plan ahead to ensure content is getting posted to your Facebook pages if auto-post is turned off.
Build out a posting schedule that makes sense for you and your audience.
Determine your “best times to post”: Early morning, afternoon and evening (after work/dinner).
Schedule posts ahead for the weekend.
Diversity content: Posting link after link is not the most effective Facebook strategy. Diversify your Facebook pages with questions, photos and videos to stand out on the news feed and draw in followers.
Post engagement questions to interact with readers.
Share posts from other community pages.
Post photos or videos that will resonate with the audience.
Customize social copy: When Facebook pages are on auto-post, the dek of the article will post as the caption, which isn’t always ideal. Use your Facebook caption to drive the reader in and make them want to click into the article. Ask questions and add humor when you can. Bonus points for emojis.
Be conversational. Get creative with your captions.
Change the headline to make it more social-friendly.
Tip: You can do this on SocialFlow or FB without changing it on the CMS.
Tag other pages in your captions.
Look at the data: We have tools to help you understand what’s working on your pages and what isn’t. Facebook Insights is a great tool to look at reach (how many people saw your posts) as well as drilling down to the post-level performance.
Monitor Chartbeat for Facebook spikes.
Use Facebook Insights to track FB performance and data:
When fans are online
Top posts of the week/month
Trends or changes in reach, interactions and page growth
Engagement Help
LIST OF SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT QUESTIONS
Here’s an extensive list of engagement questions to use. Add your own voice and local context.
Share your posts to local FB community groups. Use this as a starting point to find groups in your region.
How to film a Facebook Live, and tips from your colleagues.
Report abuse