Succeed with your eCommerce store.

What type of Facebook post will work

Ok so when you are first starting out with Facebook or if you have been using it for a while with little success what sort of post should you write to get the most engagement comments and likes.

If we take a step back Facebook used to send your posts out to pretty much all the people who liked your page which made sense the reason you like a Facebook page is because you are interested in what the business has to talk about.

However Facebook decided that if they allowed this to keep happening peoples timelines would be filled with just posts from Facebook pages (as companies became more social savvy they are posting on their pages more than ever).

What did Facebook do, well they restricted the reach a post would have to potentially 10% or less of your list so if you have a 1000 likes and followers for your Facebook page then only 100 or less people will see your post.

2 ways to overcome the Facebook restriction

There are two ways to get around this restriction the first Pay to Play and the one Facebook want you to do is boost your post, basically you pay Facebook and it will show your post to more people and more of your list – yes I know their your fans your posts and you have to pay so they can see your message, but Facebook would argue that without this social platform you would not be able to connect with so may people and they are right but it is still hard to swallow.

Click the Boost Post button and pay for more people to see your post.

 

Ok so that’s the easy throw money at Facebook approach but what if you don’t have loads of money to spend with Facebook or quite simply you don’t want them to take all your money what other techniques can you use.

More engagement more reach.

Quite simply put the better engagement your post has the more people will see it and hopefully share, like and most importantly leave a comment.

If Facebook see that a post is very popular i.e. lots of likes, shares and comments then it will share this with more of your list and this is how you can increase that 10% reach.

So how do you know what will make a great post one that is really going to capture the imagination and have maximum engagement with your followers, well you can try different posts using Facebooks built in analytics called insights to see how your posts are doing and keep testing and working it out from there.

The other very easy technique and Facebook do help you in this way is to spy on your competitors and see what works for them, basically you are letting them do all the testing and telling you the results so you can base your future post on this advice.

So how do you spy on them

firstly as mentioned Facebook make this really easy for you. you need to look at what your competitors are posting.

So lets jump straight in.

1. Open your Facebook page and click on the Insights tab (I am using my sister website Geeks Have Landed for this example)

 

2. Once you are in your Insights page scroll to the bottom of the page until you see the Pages to watch section.

3. Click on the Add Pages button

4. Start to search your competitors, in this case I am looking for other sites which are based on the term geek, but you just think of your competitors and type their name in the box.

5. Once you have found a page to follow just click + Watch Page to add this to your Pages to Watch.

6. Once you have your list just click on one of the pages you want to look at, in this example I am going to look at ThinkGeek and what makes their posts so successful.

 

7. What you will see if a list of all the top posts so you can see what they are successful and what the audience really resonate with, don’t forget what works in one niche won’t necessarily work for another type of niche so always make sure you are looking at posts from a similar niche as yours.

8. So we can see that this post about star wars bags has 17005 Likes, 1369 comments and 7890 shares and just think how many of the people this post has reached.

9. If we look down the list we can look at other posts which have worked well.

10. This is a funny post which has also been well liked and shared but not as much as the first one but if you look through the list you will get some great ideas which you know will work well in your niche.

Conclusion

So to get your reach out in Facebook either you pay and play and boost your posts so more of your fans will see your post or you look to see what is working with your competitors and get some ideas for your own campaigns.

Whichever method you use or a combination of them both just remember to keep growing a list you need to keep posting and engaging with your Facebook page this is the best way to keep your fans happy hopefully they will share with their friends and this will lead to more visitors to your eCommerce store and hopefully more sales.

Just remember don’t try to obviously sell in Facebook this is the best way to lose your audience, just add value say something interesting and watch you page likes grow.

Until next time

Good luck with your shop.

Rob Boyle