How to Write Facebook Status Updates That Will Leave Your Audience Coming Back for More

How to Write Facebook Status Updates That Will Leave Your Audience Coming Back for More

The trick sounds simple: You have to optimize your status updates to stand out. What do Facebook users engage with the most? Status updates are perfect for sharing a nice photo or video, and your users will engage with that more than a plain text update. Some pages post considerably lengthy status updates, and they don’t get much engagement from it. Doritos mostly posts short updates dealing with their products: Growth Hackers takes a slightly different approach and shares articles: As long as the topic is tied to your product in some way, you’ll be fine. Remember the options: You can ask a question You can pose a challenge You can give directions Those are the three main ways of interacting with your audience. If you’re posting about a product, asking a question might be a smart move. Let’s look at a random status update from Starbucks: This update is taking a smart angle that you’ve probably seen a lot in marketing. Shouldn’t every little update be the best they’ve ever seen? How do you engage with your Facebook audience?

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facebook status

Ever feel like you don’t get that much attention on Facebook?

Every marketer wants more attention.

After all, that’s the goal of social media marketing, right?

The problem is, it can be difficult to get some time in Facebook’s spotlight unless you know exactly what to do.

The trick sounds simple: You have to optimize your status updates to stand out.

In reality, there’s more to it than that, but that’s the basic idea — optimizing your updates.

The way you optimize your fan page updates is not super obvious by any means. So don’t beat yourself up for not “doing it right.”

I’m going to show you how to consistently create status updates that get attention.

No more waiting for likes and comments. No more spending 20 minutes on each update.

Just an easy process that gets results.

Let’s jump right in.

What do Facebook users engage with the most?

Have you ever asked yourself exactly what gets the most engagement on Facebook?

It’s a question you need to ask.

First off, let’s define “engagement.” According to Facebook, engagement is somewhat of an umbrella term that can refer to all the actions people take as a result of what you post.

For status updates, this breaks down into likes, comments, and shares.

So what do people engage with?

A couple of years ago, I created an infographic that explains exactly this.

Here’s the shortened version for you: People like content that is interesting, important, timely, and funny.

Don’t worry. You don’t have to tick all of those boxes to create a great update.

But you do have to make something worth engaging with. That’s a lot easier said than done, so here are some examples.

Starbucks regularly gets more engagement on inspirational posts like this one:

They also get high engagement for announcements of any kind:

These kinds of updates are interesting, important, and sometimes funny. They inspire people who follow Starbucks, and they have good photography to boot.

I doubt you’re as big as Starbucks (I’m not either!), so let’s look at a smaller brand.

Lyle’s, a restaurant in London, gets the most likes when they post pictures of food:

Food posts almost always outperform all of their other updates. That’s because these posts are interesting and relevant.

Of course, there are tons of other factors that come into play here, and you could definitely research this more.

Overall, remember that your content needs to be interesting, important, timely, and/or funny.

Let’s break down each one of these to see how they work.

Make it interesting

When I say “interesting,” I also mean relevant.

That’s simple, right? You’ll only be interested in things that are relevant to your interests.

That’s why truly interesting content has to cater to your audience’s likes.

But how do you find out what your audience likes?

There are a few ways that are all pretty easy.

The first is to use Facebook Audience Insights.

This will show you what pages your followers like, what they buy, how much they use Facebook, and so much more.

There’s one caveat: To use Audience Insights, you have to have Facebook ads set up. But let’s face it, you’re probably running an ad right now.

If you have a Facebook ad set up, Audience Insights is an extremely convenient method of gathering data.

But let’s say you don’t have ads. That’s okay.

This next method isn’t as informative, but it’s still very helpful.

In fact, I recommend using this method even if you also use Audience Insights.

Simplymeasured.com offers free Facebook insight reports that show you how your users are interacting with your content.

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You can see what people are clicking on the most and what’s performing the best.

See why I recommend this? It’s free and full of insanely helpful data.

But what if you don’t use Audience Insights and you want more detailed info on who your audience is?

There are many other methods of getting demographics and psychographics.

My favorite way to do this is to use Google Analytics (GA) to track your Facebook page.

To do this, open your GA dashboard and head to the sidebar. Navigate to Acquisition > Social > Network Referrals.

On the next page, find the little box that says “Secondary dimension.” Click on it and select Users.

You’ll see several options for different demographics:

You can discover your social users’ countries, browser types, and much more.

This isn’t the most comprehensive way to get information about your users, but it is helpful if you need it.

Last but not least, you can always send out surveys or polls to get information directly from your followers.

So back to interesting content.

Don’t let all of this data sit around meaninglessly. Use it to create content that your users will love.

It’s simple––do more of what you know (or think) your audience will like.

If your photos get tons of likes, post more photos. If your audience loves your live streams, host streams more often and build more buzz around them.

Be on the lookout for trends that happen over time. Don’t take any single post and use it as your only source of information.

Sound good? Awesome. Moving on.

Be a source of useful information

There’s more information today than at any other point in history.

I know, I know, what an original thought. But it’s also a wake-up call.

Here’s an honest question: Why would anyone want to listen to you?

I’m not trying to be rude––heck, I ask myself this every day! I’m trying to make a point.

If you want to cut through all the noise of our everyday world, you have to stand out. And that’s tough.

Being an invaluable source of information can help you with that.

Take a look at Polygon, a site that published long-form content on video games.

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They’re one of the most popular gaming sites because they produce…

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