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Tips to Get More Shares on Facebook

Tips to get more Facebook LikesFacebook engagement can be a tricky thing. If you want high clicks, comments, and shares you should consider what kinds of posts will resonate with your audience, what time of day to post, and what day of week to post.

I attended Digtial Summit last week and heard Matt Peters (@fracked) of Pandemic Labs (@pandemiclabs) speak about getting the most engagement on your Facebook page. His presentation, like most at the conference, referred to what works for large companies and  corporations (like their client Ritz Carlton). However, a few of his key takeaways can apply to small businesses, startups, and even bloggers with Facebook fan pages if you take the time to review your own analytics and data, then modify the advice to fit your needs.

1. Post Photo and Video Facebook Updates

When I give my own presentations about Facebook and increasing engagement, I point out that images and video are popular because Facebook is so visual. When you’re looking at your Facebook News Feed, you’re scanning it quickly. Text update after text update gets lost, but a photo or video catches your eye. Friends (or fans if you’re hosting a business page) are more likely to stop and look at your photo or play your video and, because they’ve interacted with it, they are more likely to share the content. In fact, Matt said Facebook updates that include photos are five times more engaging than updates with links. But guess what? Most pages (and people) post text and links 2.7 times more often than they post photos. If you’re a business (or even a blogger who has a Facebook fan page), it’s already hard to get your content in front of people because Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm gives preference to updates from your personal friends, not the fan pages you like. If you can post more photos and video, you may have a better chance of increasing your fans’ interactions with your page, thereby improving your EdgeRank, and helping you show up in their News Feed more often.

Facebook Photo Tip: Humans like contrast. Our eyes are drawn to specific images and we ignore others. If you want your images to stand out to your audience try this: use images that are predominantly red or orange. Matt suggests that because Facebook’s design is primarily blue, images that are predominantly red or orange promote more clicks and shares because red and orange are complimentary colors to blue.

2. Post to Facebook on the Right Day

Another thing I discuss in my Facebook workshops is that with anything you do  — Facebook, Twitter, G+, your blog, whatever — it’s critical to know your audience. Think about when you use Facebook recreationally. Most people are on Facebook checking their friends’ updates before they go to work, during their lunch hour (if there’s not a firewall blocking it), after work (usually after dinner and after the kids are in bed), and on the weekends. But when are you posting to your fan page? Most businesses posts are published during business hours — and they miss their audience for the most part. When Matt’s company looked at several large companies (and we’re talking about millions of Facebook interactions here), they found that the posts with the most interaction were posted at (times are EST)

  • Midnight on Sunday
  • Midnight on Monday
  • 10p Friday
  • 11p Tuesday

Because Pandemic Labs was looking at large companies, I strongly suggest that if you’re a small business or blogger with a fan page, you analyze your own data, then test your posting habits rather than using their results as a firm rule. If you’re just posting during business hours, and stopping when you go home, you’re definitely missing some prime Facebook engagement time. Which brings us to..

Facebook Posting Tip: Update Facebook on Sunday. One of the mos interesting things Matt said was that their research showed that posts on Sunday have 32% more interactions than the weekday average.

When do you post to your Facebook fan page or profile? Have you noticed a difference in comments, Likes, or shares when you post photos or videos vs. text updates? Leave me a note in the comments letting me know; I’d love to hear about how things are working for you.

16 thoughts on “Tips to Get More Shares on Facebook”

  1. Md. Azharul Islam Jijon

    This is great post to enhance website visibility among the viewers. Now-a-days facebook is the most potential social media to communicate with each other around the hole world.

  2. Pingback: Social Media Success Tips: Breaking down Social Media letter by le...

  3. This is an amazing article! I am working on compiling a list of influential bloggers and these tips are unique and well researched. If you wouldn’t mind, I would like to set up an email interview with you for http://www.howtomakeblogs.info

    Thanks again for the wonderful tips! I will be using them on my own website this coming week.

  4. I think Sunday is a good day for updates because most people are online? Just curious, what of Friday evening?

    1. Daniel, I think Friday evening is a great time, but it will depend on your audience. I suspect that a younger audience (20-35?) may be checking what everyone’s doing and what’s offered for the weekend coming up. The guy speaking at the conference did mention that Friday afternoons/evenings worked for some businesses, but Sundays still did better.

  5. Hi Melanie,
    That information about posting Facebook shares during weekends, especially Sunday, is quite very new to me. I think I’ll try doing that on my next post on my personal blog and see how it goes. Thanks for sharing!

  6. Posting on Sunday is really a cool idea. I think its an effective and easy way of getting more shares, comments and high clicks. I want to apply this idea on my facebook page.

  7. really surprising about the days that are popular. I’m asleep at some of those times. Do you recommend hootsuite & networked blogs now? i know at one point you did not. Thanks for the info!

    1. Debbie, I don’t recommend always using Networked Blogs. Facebook does value manual posting over scheduled postings from third-parties. The good news is that if you use something like Networked Blogs, those posts aren’t being stacked any more. (FB used to stack all posts from a tool and only the most recent post or two showed; users had to click to see more. That essentially made your posts invisible to a lot of people. FB no longer does that for third-party tools/apps.) The bad news is that if you’re using a tool like Networked Blogs and people click through the link, there’s a Networked Blogs toolbar at the top of the page. If you see that, it means they’re filtering your content through them and they get the traffic, not you. I think there are more reasons NOT to use a third-party tool for updates and I prefer to update manually. There are certainly instances where you may want to schedule posts, and that’s OK. I just encourage people to do as much manual posting as possible.

    1. Yep! Sunday nights are big. I think people are winding down their weekends, thinking about the week ahead, and making that last check on FB. Of course, everything depends on your audience. Here are a few more things to consider:
      * If you’re catering to a young audience (18-30, say), then they may be checking FB later on the weekends after they get home from going out.
      * People with kids may be checking after they’ve put the kids to bed and have a few minutes while watching TV.
      * And, of course, the times listed in the post are all Eastern, so consider that people on the west coast are still checking FB at what would be 10p on the East coast, but 7p for the west coast. Your audience is everywhere!

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