3 rules for writing engaging facebook page updates

Over the past 18 months as an agency we estimate we have sent out roughly 1200 individual facebook page updates for various clients and brands across Australia and the world.  During this time we’ve noticed that small, seemingly subtle differences in how updates are written and presented can make a massive difference in terms of engagement.  So, in the first post of many, we want to share with you what we’ve come to adopt as the first 3 rules of facebook page update creation.

Rule #1 – Keep it short.

The human brain only has so much available processing power at any given time therefore it is imperitive that your message be quickly and easily digested by the brain in order for the user to engage.  If it appears too long, the brain will pass it off as too much work and quickly move onto the next update in the feed, leaving your update with no engagement.

Rule #2 – Keep it clean

When adding a link into your update do not include the actual URL in the update itself, it appears unprofessional and does a great job of confusing users.  Once the link is loaded into the update, clean up the text and copy that appears to the right, often there is too much information here, making the update too big.  Once the update is too big — see Rule #1.

Rule #3 – Take the thought process away

This is probably the most fundamental insight we have learned so far.   In taking the thought process away from users, we guarantee your updates will produce more engagement.  Instead of writing updates with open-ended questions which requires the user to muster significant brainpower in order to engage, write the update with 2 answers already supplied.  This way the user doesn’t have to think in order to engage, they quickly choose which answer suits them then submits the one word answer to the update and boom, they’ve successfully engaged.

Example

Update requiring high thought process to engage

“Our new shoes are so awesome, what do you like about them?”

Update requiring minimal thought process to engage

“Our new shoes are so awesome, what do you like about them – the colour or the design?”

Ask yourself, which one would you seem more likely to engage with?

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As mentioned above, this will become the first of many such posts in a series with an aim to share insights that we’ve learned over the past 2 years working on facebook that will hopefully help you in your facebook marketing efforts.

Rules #4, #5 and #6 will be posted shortly.