Posting is the main form of communicating with your audience on Facebook. You have to get good at creating posts to reach your intended audience and make them customers.

To achieve the best results when preparing a post, there are some rules you should follow.

• Keep it short. Aim at 100-250 characters and get about 60% more likes, comments and shares. That’s a big difference and even Facebook itself recommends it.
• Add visuals to your posts. Most people learn by seeing and remember visual content easier.
• Add links leading to external sites, like your homepage. It’s an excellent way to  encourage people to engage with your content.
• Share discounts or special offers, which will help to spread the word about you.  
• Make different posts for different audiences and target them at a suitable demographic group. You can set visibility of your content limited to a given area (whole country, region or even a city of residence) and a language. You can do it in the posting box by clicking the globe icon. (First, make sure that your Page’s settings allow you to target posts to different demographic groups).
• Heavily consider the content of your posts. Posting the same things over and over again will affect your reach and your engagement negatively. Only posting about your products gets boring fast and is asocial. Which defeats the purpose of being on a social media network. So remember that even though social media can leverage your sales, it can’t be your only goal. We strongly recommend that you experiment with different kinds of content.

Making a post engaging is one of the most important parts of making a post. There are a few ways to get your audience engaged:

• Make a contest.
• Post a thoughtful statement or a motivational quote.
• Share what you find interesting for you and your audience.
• Share important news for your industry or the area you live in.
• Don’t spam your fans with irrelevant posts.

When posting, remember to be consistent with the image of your brand. Don’t post things that are out of character for you. Don’t post silly cat photos if you want your brand to be perceived as reliable and respectful. On the other hand, if you want to appear more down-to-earth, silly cats might be a good way to show that.

We live in a fast-paced world, so remember to be in touch with the latest trends (and not only  within your industry). Following trends and posting about them will show your fans that you know what’s going on and care about your news-craving audience.

How to follow trends?

There are two types of trends you should be following:

• General and global trends.
• Industry specific trends.

Global trends are ones that are known to most people and appeal to everybody. Take for example the birth of the British Royal Baby a few years back. Both media and brands were covering and reacting to the event. Why? Because people were interested in it. Another good example is the Super Bowl, which isn’t only a sports event in America, but a cultural phenomenon. You don’t have to be a sports brand to post something related to the final NFL showdown. The biggest brands in these cases respond to events in near real-time.

Marketing your brand in this instantaneous way is known as real-time marketing, and it is increasingly popular during trending and global events. Don’t worry, you don’t have to have a big marketing team; with some preparation you can do it all on your own. Read our guide on the topic.

Then there’s finding trends that are unique for your industry and business. If your brand is related to education, recurring trends will be summer vacation, back to school, etc. You have plenty of possibilities here. Don’t forget about various holidays, when people buy gifts like Christmas, Father’s Day, Mother’s Day – write about your gift propositions when those holidays are near.

The easiest way to follow and monitor trends is by using Google Trends. It’s name says it all. Google is the largest search engine on the internet, meaning it (usually) has what you’re looking for. Just go to trends.google.com and you’ll get a list what people have searched for the most.

Want to go deeper? No problem. You can change the search criteria by location, time period, topic, and  you can also check the popularity of any topic that comes to your mind by putting it in the search bar.

1. How do I create a Facebook Page?
2. When should I post on Facebook?
3. Who will see my Facebook posts?