Facebook Basics: How to Write Great Facebook Posts

The actionable guide that teaches you how to write Facebook posts that drive real
business results!
How to
Write Great
Facebook Posts!
Facebook Basics Series
Written by Zachary Chastain
Head of Community Engagement

Anatomy of a Great
Facebook Post

A GREAT FACEBOOK POST IS:
THOUGHTLABS www.thoughtlabs.com 3
Targeted
Your content was designed (or chosen) with a specific
segment of your audience in mind.

Actionable
Not only is your content targeted, but it also solves a
problem that your target audience cares about or provides
information that can help your target audience begin to
recognize or solve a problem.

Built for Discussion
You’ve asked a question, inserted some opinion, or taken a
stance on some issue to encourage your community to
engage with your content in a more meaningful way than
liking it and moving on. Posts that get more comments
drive 176% more views on average to your linked content!

Shareable
Content can be shareable for a variety of reasons. Often
content is shareable because it is topical, actionable, or
humorous. Ideally a combination of all three.

EXAMPLE – MATCHING COMMUNITY EXPECTATIONS
Vanguard learns exactly what their
community’s pain points are and
what they want to learn more about
while also providing immediate
value.

IDENTIFY WHY YOUR AUDIENCE FOLLOWS
YOU ON FACEBOOK
It’s okay to start with some assumptions about why people follow
you and what value they are hoping to get out of the content that
you post.
1
3 QUICK STEPS TO FIND THE RIGHT TOPICS

PERFORM A QUICK POST AUDIT. ARE
YOUR POSTS ACTIONABLE?
Look through your last 10 Facebook posts and answer these
questions:
• Does it offer value to the audience?
• Does that value match their expectations?
• Is it crystal clear on helping the audience solve a problem?
2

START A DISCUSSION IN YOUR
COMMUNITY
It can be about anything related to your industry. It can be topical,
funny, or opinionated.
Be active in the discussion.
Try to pick a topic that will get your community not only talking to
you, but to each other as well!
3

EXAMPLE – FINDING COMMON GROUND
Lifehacker’s post focused on
creating common ground, resulting
in conversations between
community members.

KEY TAKEAWAYS
“
”
Writing great Facebook posts
begins with posting actionable
content that solves a problem
your target audience cares
about.

Measuring the
Success of Your
Posts

KEY METRICS TO FOCUS ON
Clicks/Views
This shows the amount of traffic you’re driving to your
content. Even if you don’t have your own blog yet, this is
still a great metric for figuring out whether people care
about the content you’re posting and if the way you’re
positioning it makes people want to read/watch it.

Comments
It takes a lot of time and effort for someone to stop what
they’re doing and think of a useful comment for your
Facebook post. If you’re receiving useful comments then
you know that what you’re posting is valuable. Take the
opportunity to reach out to everyone who comments. If
they’re critical, don’t be offended, ask for their feedback
and take it into consideration.

Shares
It takes just as much effort to share a post as it does to
comment, since most people will either summarize what
they’re sharing or insert some analysis or opinion.
However, if a post is being shared, it has done more than
catch someone’s attention or incite them to discuss, it has
also provided value that they want to share with their
friends.

Likes
Likes on a post are the most common type of engagement.
It takes next to zero effort to click the like button, and likes
don’t tell you as much about how people actually felt about
your post as the other metrics do. Still, they’re a good
starting point and all interactions on your posts help to
make your posts more visible in the Facebook News Feed.

EXAMPLE – MAKING SHAREABLE POSTS
AVG Technologies’ post used an
image that caught the eye and
contained a call to action to share.
This image drove more shares than
likes, a very rare occurrence.

IDENTIFY A POST THAT WAS SHARED
MORE FREQUENTLY AND FIGURE OUT
WHY
Was it:
Topical: Did it tie into current news or an event that everyone was talking
about?
Actionable: Did it provide clear, step-by-step instructions to solve a
problem?
Targeted: Did this post do a great job of lining up the right topic for the
right audience?
1
2 QUICK STEPS TO CREATE MORE SHAREABLE POSTS

PUT YOUR NEW INSIGHTS TO USE
Create a new post using these insights and do a quick comparison
of its shares to the average shares of your last 10 posts.
If you beat the average, then you’ve confirmed your theory and
learned something new about your community! If you didn’t, try to
figure out why. Even if your assumptions from your first analysis
were wrong or didn’t apply to your community, this can still be a
great learning opportunity.
2
2 QUICK STEPS TO CREATE MORE SHAREABLE POSTS

THE INSIGHT CYCLE
Observation
“This post got more
shares than our
others!”
Theory
“This post was
shared more often
because…”
Test
“We’re repeating this
in our next post to
compare the
results.”
Report
“We replicated our
results from the first
post!”
Insight
“People share our
posts because…”
The Insight
Cycle
Elevate Your Analysis
Beyond Observations
The Insight Cycle shows you how to
build on observations taken from
your previous posts to get better
results in the future.
As you repeat this process you will
begin to uncover deep insights
about your community, like why they
prefer a certain type of content or
what drives them to take action.

KEY TAKEAWAYS
“
”
The metric most relevant to your
business goals will likely be
clicks or views on your content,
while shares, comments, and
likes demonstrate the value your
community sees in your content.

EXPORT POST DATA FROM FACEBOOK INSIGHTS
1
4 QUICK STEPS TO AVOID BAD POSTS

GET THE NEGATIVE FEEDBACK METRICS
Open the Excel spreadsheet and go to the “Lifetime Negative Feedback”
tab. This will give you a per-post breakdown of negative feedback on your
posts.2

EXAMINE YOUR DATA AND PULL OUT YOUR BEST
AND WORST POSTS
Look for posts that received a lot of negative interactions and posts that
received very few. Then start digging into why.
3

LOOK FOR TRENDS
Pay close attention to:
The target audience. Maybe a post scored so much negative feedback
because it was advertised to an audience that wasn't a good fit for the
content.
The positioning. Did you accurately describe the content with the
headline you selected? Make sure the content you share delivers on what
your headline promised.
The post image. Make sure that your images don't contradict your
content and the way you've positioned it with your headline and link
description.
4

KEY NEGATIVE FEEDBACK METRICS
Hide All Clicks
This one is pretty rough. It means that your post upset
someone enough that they clicked on the chevron in the
upper right corner of your post in the News Feed and told
Facebook that they don't want to see any more posts from
you - ever.

Hide Clicks
This one is less harsh. They still didn't like your post, but
they probably felt like this was an isolated issue for you,
and they still want to see more posts about other topics (or
maybe posts that are positioned better or more targeted for
them) from you in the future.

Report Spam Clicks
Someone was really upset with your post, they either felt it
was spam or felt that it was untrustworthy enough to report
it to Facebook as spam. This doesn't necessarily mean it
really was spammy, some people even view all ads that
appear in the News Feed as spam, no matter how
trustworthy the advertiser or well-target the content, but if
you're getting a lot of these then you need to start looking
into why that's happening.

Unlike Page Clicks
This means someone unliked your page from this post.
Functionally it's almost the same as "Hide All Clicks" but
unliking not only keeps them from seeing your posts in
their News Feed, it also removes them from your total likes
count for your Facebook page. One important difference
though is that since they haven't hidden all posts from you,
if one of their friends shares a great post from you in the
future, they could see it in their News Feed and return to
your page.

KEY TAKEAWAYS
“
”
Negative Feedback metrics can
help you identify posts that did
not perform well. Analyzing
these under-performing posts
can teach you just as much as
analyzing your best posts.

WANT MORE? GET THE BOOK!
Download the eBook
This presentation is an excerpt from our “Facebook
Basics: How to Write Great Facebook Posts” eBook.
To get all the material, including the step-by-step
walkthroughs, you can download the eBook for free.
Just click the button below!

About Zachary Chastain
ZACHARY CHASTAIN
Head of Communities
zachary.chastain@thoughtlabs.com
Zachary Chastain is a metrics-driven Community
Manager, using the hard data from client communities
to understand what really works and develop solid
communication and content plans.
Zachary loves to experiment with new ways to reach
and engage social audiences, learning from and
integrating the best practices from around the web.

ABOUT THOUGHT LABS
Creativity. Engagement. Results.
Founded in 2009, we have helped companies of all sizes
integrate customers into their businesses using social
technologies. We continue to evolve as the social platforms
With decades of project management and software
engineering experience, we create unique yet practical
solutions for our clients and have the technical talent to
explain how they work and why.
We are recognized thought leaders on Facebook, having
published a successful book 'Essential Facebook
Development' for Pearson/Addison-Wesley; we also created
one of the top applications on Facebook with over 4 million
installed users.
We deeply understand all the technologies, techniques, and
metrics involved in creating successful social media
strategies and pride ourselves on helping our clients do the
same.
“Thought Labs really set us off on the right foot
when we were just venturing into Facebook.
Thanks for taking us to the next level and
empowering us to sustain the momentum!”
– Kim McDermott, Director of
Communications, West Point Association of
Graduates
“Thought Labs has been a vital component in
building our highly engaged Facebook
community and in cultivating our brand
advocates, who help to support and spread
the AVG brand. They consistently deliver high-
quality work based on strong expertise and
proven metrics”
- Jasdev Dhaliwal, Director of Social Media
Communities, AVG Technologies
“Cappy did a fantastic job providing insights
into what works and doesn't work to market
apps based upon his actual experience,
educating others on what it takes to
implement "appvertising" campaigns.”
- Eddie Smith, Head of Ads API, Twitter
A boutique digital marketing agency in Boston

THOUGHTLABS
Creativity. Engagement. Results.

Facebook Basics: How to Write Great Facebook Posts

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