Social media has exploded in the last decade. Facebook alone has 1.71 billion active users and counting. All of this attention has given rise to social media marketing, but the competition is fierce. In order to stand out in a world where organic reach is all but gone, you’ll need to create posts with a perfect structure.
Today, I’m going to show you the three elements of a perfect Facebook post. These elements should always come together to form a cohesive whole that demands attention and earns engagement.
The 3 Pieces of a Perfect Facebook Post
Facebook is the first place marketers go when they want to promote content, make announcements, or start advertising campaigns. The potential for reach is practically limitless, but we have to remember that organic reach is lower than ever.
To stand out, every post you create must be perfect. What does a perfect post look like? It’s time to find out.
1. Visuals or Video
Visual content is a must on social media. Check out these statistics on using images and video in your social media marketing:
- Posts with images on Facebook have 37% more engagement than those that are only text.
- Articles with images get 94% more views on average
- Colored visuals increase user’s willingness to read content by 80%, according to studies.
- Users who watch videos are 1.81 times more likely to convert than those who don’t.
- Syndcast predicts that 74% of all internet traffic in 2018 will be video.
For images, you should always look for relevant and high quality options that use bright colors to catch the eye of the user. The ideal size for these images is 1,200 x 620 pixels to get the best look.
In terms of which images to use. You can use photos from free resources, or you can take your own screenshots. Another option is to use a tool like Canva to make your own images from scratch and even add text to them.
Remember that your images should somehow pertain to the post and the article or page it’s linking to. Consider the story that your image tells, and how it ties into your brand’s culture.
Switching gears, you should also incorporate video into your posts on Facebook. You can use pre-recorded content, or you can also take advantage of Facebook Live to stream content instantly to your followers.
Here are some ways to incorporate video into your Facebook posts:
- Film tutorials where you explain how to use your product or service to solve a problem
- Have fun and create something behind-the-scenes that shows off the culture of your brand
- Turn your call-to-action into a video
- Stream your next company event or fundraiser
2. Links
Every post you publish on Facebook should have a link. This comes from studies done by Facebook that discovered the power of links in Facebook posts. It’s important to note that the platform has been cracking down on “clickbait” which tries to lure people in with a vague headline.
You can combine a link with a photo, or make a link post on its own. The link post pulls meta data from the page itself that you’re linking to. This usually grabs the meta description and a picture from the page to display in our final post.
You can make one of these by simply pasting your link into the status window. Facebook should pull the metadata for you, at which point you can remove the link and write your own quick introduction. Once you’ve started a blog, and created posts with these elements, this is how you will promote them on social media.
If you’ve just published something, and Facebook isn’t pulling the meta information properly, you can use a simple debugger tool. On this page, simply paste your link and click the “debug” button. Once you’ve done this, you should see the full post appear below. If not, click the “scrape again” button until the image, title tag, and meta description appear.
Now you should be able to share the link on your Facebook post and see all the data appear. In terms of your written introduction, some have reported that less text works better, but other studies have shown that 80+ words in your post will earn twice as much engagement.
In your specific case, it’s best to try both options and see which one garners more engagement from your audience.
3. Perfect Timing
The final ingredient of the perfect Facebook post is timing. You could have the greatest content and image known to humanity, but if you don’t post at the right day and time, you could easily be buried by other content.
Research has shown that 75% of your engagement happens within the first five hours after a post is published. That means you need to time this window to incorporate the time when your audience is online.
Specific times vary based on your industry or business, but there are several different studies that show some common windows of opportunity.
- QuickSprout reports that Thursdays and Fridays between 1PM and 3PM are the best time
- Microsoft’s studies discovered that Thursdays and Fridays between 1PM and 3PM are best.
- Finally, Hubspot found that Thursdays and Fridays between 1PM and 3PM were best.
Looking at all of this data, the best times to start with would be Thursdays and Fridays between 1PM and 3PM. You can expand from here depending on your results as you continue to test what works.
Final Thoughts
Facebook posts are tricky, but if you incorporate these three elements into each one that you create, you’ll find that you earn the engagement and the click-through rate you’re looking for. How do you create the perfect Facebook posts? Let us know in the comments!
