Testing Which Posts Work on Facebook - Boost your Blog BB#100

I’d like to share a thought before we get to the type of posts you might want to explore. Remember we are trying to get to know our audience. Our Facebook audience may not be the same (and probably isn’t) as your blog’s audience nor the other social media platforms. Each platform brings its own unique audience. Each can drive traffic to your website and encourage growth on that specific social media platform. But, again, each are unique animals. In order to know what works, you must start testing which posts work and which ones don’t and you must test them For Each Platform. Remember, I am only really focusing on Facebook, so my suggestions and ideas will not necessarily work for Google+ or Twitter. But the concept of testing will. Now, back to your regularly scheduled article about boosting your blog via Facebook….

I keep talking about “types of posts”, what do I mean? Well there are several different “flavors” of posts. A good variety of all of these posts would be smart, but some will resonate more with your audience than others. How do we know which ones will work better… yep, you guessed it… testing them! 🙂

Challenge: Test Which Posts Work best for YOUR Audience.

1. Easy to answer Questions.

These are designed to get your audience talking. I honestly HATE stupid questions, so I rarely ask the easy ones… but I do ask who their day is going, what’s for dinner (usually when I’m hungry), what they are doing at various times of the day, what field trips they are doing this week, etc.

2. Crowd-sourcing Questions.

For our Facebook page, we get a TON of questions from homeschoolers (and potential homeschoolers). Instead of answering them ourselves, we pose them to our audience. Homeschool moms love to help each other and all of us have opinions, so these questions usually get a ton of engagement. One thing I personally need to get better about is engaging among the answers. It is so easy to just post the question and move on… but honestly, we need to be involved. We need to know our page is not being used for inappropriate content, spam, and not the least of which… unpaid advertisements. So, this is one of my goals this year: to stay more involved once the question is posed and our moms are answering it.

3. Links to your blog.

Again, it would be easy to just post the link and the title and move on. But what I’m finding is that this is not going to get much engagement usually. We try really hard to not have exotic titles on our posts… but we can certainly use them on Facebook to pique interest. We are testing everything right now, so test what gets the best audience participation. Don’t forget to drive traffic to your website by providing blog posts to answer some of these questions.

4. Pictures.

For our page, funny pictures by far are the most shared posts. Usually something that not only homeschool moms, but moms in general identify with. But the posts that get the most conversation going are personal pictures of our team when they are doing the social media that day. Real life homeschooling in action. Share some of who you are and what your page is about… genuine and real-life items are loved by our followers. See if that works for you.

5. Links to Other Articles.

Be a good steward of information. Yes, your audience likes you and what you are doing… but, as good as you are, there are others pages that have great information… why not share their articles too? I think we all need to stop being so competitive and start working together to help each other. I am the epitome of a Type A competitive personality so I understand how hard that is… but turn that competitiveness on yourself. Try to beat your numbers for last month, your numbers of page views, your newsletter subscribers, etc. It will benefit all of us in the long run if we develop cooperative relationships and help our audience be more successful.

6. Quotes by Leaders in Your Field.

These can be either pictures or just the quote typed in as a status. With our audience, these get shared. Especially ones that inspire them, encourage them, challenge them or they identify with. I have a few that I always search for first for education. Again, we are testing everything right now, so see who your audience likes, if they will share quotes from the status or if pictures do better. Being methodical!

7. Videos.

This is another area that I’m not doing a great job of posting. I am posting our Mentoring Moms’ Hangouts each week, but other than that…. not much. So, this is one area we all need to test. Do you use a lot of videos on your page? Share your experiences below!

8. Infographics.

This type of post is one that seems to still be extremely popular. If you create your own infographics, even better… Our audience loves to see research about how successful (as a whole) homeschooling is when stacked up against about any other form of education. They like to see the demographics in easy to understand grids. They like to see how others are homeschooling. Again, you need to know your own audience to determine if these work for you… but try them and see!

I’m sure there are others that I didn’t think to add. Do you have suggestions that I didn’t include? Please share your thoughts in the comments below!

One final note… there is another big question that seems to be asked and answered a lot … How often to post? I think you are getting my point by now… I can’t answer that for you (nor can anyone else that is not an admin on your site). Each audience is different… even within the same exact demographic and same niche! So, test post frequency to see if your audience engages more or less when you post more often / less often. Again, doing the hard work is the only way to get to the real answer for these questions.

Be sure to read the other posts in this series:

Day one: Know your Audience
Day two: Know your Competition
Day three: The Goal of Social Media
Day four: Turn Off the Autofeeds
Day five: Methodically Test Your Posts
Day six: Testing Which Posts Work
Day seven: Pay to Play
Day eight: Be Prepared to Change
Day nine: Start a Group
Day ten: Content is King and Social Media His Queen

Be sure to visit the other co-hosts and do their challenges as well!

Lisa from Squishable Baby wrote a series on Giveaways
Michelle from Simplify, Live, Love wrote a series on Grammar
Thaleia from Something 2 Offer wrote a series on Blog Photos and one on Commenting
Martiel from Amazing Success Academy wrote a series onSEO and one on Blog Titles and Topics
Honey from Honey’s Life wrote a series on Twitter

Until next time…