1. Think about the audience. This is the first point that should be considered for any type of communications. Why would they be interested in the post? How does it help them? Will it be posted at a time they’ll be online? 2. Keep it on point. Posts with 40 characters are the most effective. That’s really difficult in practice, but as long as people don’t have to click or tap “See more…” it’s OK. Source: https://goo.gl/JGfsgG When people skim-read their news feed, they’re more likely to take in a short piece of copy. Give them the option of finding out more using a link to a website. If it’s to your own website, you’ll be increasing its traffic. 3. Be careful with spelling. Lazy spelling on social media is fine informally with friends, but when you’re representing a brand online, 50% of people will be turned off by it. Source: https://goo.gl/3YxQ3b 4. Use an image. Posts with an image will get 2.3 times more attention. Be sure to use high quality, relevant images. Source: https://goo.gl/HpDLmE 5. Brand up images. Take a minute to put the CMF logo on images that we post. If people are going to share our content, we want it loud and clear that it came from us. 6. Image dimensions. Facebook crops and sizes images in all kinds of ways. It’s easiest to edit and upload it in the size it will appear in the newsfeed. Landscape images work best, and they need to be resized to 476 px wide, so work from that to make sure it still looks good and any copy is still legible. Source: https://goo.gl/M4Fk7d 7. Consent for photography. There are two types of consent that might be required in using images for marketing and communications purposes, including social media. ● ●
Data protection. This is required when you intend to use photographs of people’s faces. Intellectual property. This is required if you intend to use photographs of something somebody has created, for example a piece of art.
Consent via email is ideal, but verbal consent is fine too, just as long as somebody is 100% confident that they can say verbal consent was given.
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8. Avoid using logos as a post image. Using the CMF logo on top of another logo will just look messy, and logos tend not to be very inspirational or heartwarming. 9. Avoid using posters/flyers as a post image. They tend to have a lot of copy on them, which Facebook shrinks to make it fit its dimensions for images in posts, usually making it illegible to a fat-scrolling user. 10. Image credit. It’s good practice to credit the photographer, either in the post copy or on the image itself. 11. Don’t use hashtags. Facebook posts with hashtags get lower engagement. Source: https://goo.gl/EkihFm 12. Keep videos short. The latest research points at one minute being the optimum length for Facebook videos. Source: https://goo.gl/2HcShq 13. Make sure videos are subtitled. Only 7% of Facebook videos get the sound clicked on. That’s a massive 93% of videos watched silently. You need to make sure that the message still gets across so the audience. Source: https://goo.gl/S5wBWV 14. Upload videos directly to Facebook. Doing so, rather than sharing a video from another site, gets 10 times as many shares. Source: https://goo.gl/HmbNsm 15. Facebook Live. Despite being the cool new thing, the actual value of Facebook Live to brands is vague. Here are a few considerations to try and not get caught up in the hype. A lot of it applies to Facebook and digital communications in general anyway. ● ●
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Think about the audience. What are you actually offering them? What’s the benefit to them? Will they care? Quality. Without getting too much into sound engineering, have you tested how well it will sound on the device you plan to stream on, in the location you plan to stream from? Timing. When are planning to stream? There’s not much point in streaming if most of your audience is going to be at work.
Here’s a potty-mouthed take on the bandwagon: https://goo.gl/Bs8KJk 2
16. Non-CMF posts. It’s easy to post everything tenuously linked to Mayo, but be mindful that CMF isn’t a free ads service. The charities CMF work with will obviously be delighted with posts being shared from their pages, but plugging a friend’s business is wholly inappropriate. 17. Politics/religion. It’s probably stating the obvious, but don’t touch these. It’s not worth the hassle. You can’t do it without some kind of negative reaction. 18. Separate browsers. It can be useful to use a dedicated browser or an Incognito window in Chrome, for CMF business, and another one for personal activities. It reduces the chance of posting on the wrong profile. 19. Don’t beg. If you’re providing people with something they actually want, you won’t have to beg for likes and shares. The best way to get likes and share is to distribute content that is likeable. Source: https://goo.gl/aJisAf 20. Avoid asking silly questions. It might get some likes, but it’s condescending and of no benefit to the CMF or to the audience. It goes back to making sure we present high quality content. Any engagement generated this way is a vanity metric. It regularly features on Condescending Corporate Brand Page on Facebook: https://goo.gl/HaxdWw 21. Avoid “like and share” posts. This is closely tied to points 10 and 11, and includes posts such as: ● ● ●
“LIke and share if you agree with some statement” “Pick your favourite thing in this picture by liking for (a), sharing for (b), or commenting for (c)" “To be in with a chance of winning, like our page and share this post”
Source: https://goo.gl/F3qFNx 22. Use custom URLs. If you’re including a link to the CMF website, be sure to generate a custom URL with Google’s custom URL builder: https://goo.gl/DVE5op This will allow us to get a more detailed picture of people who are clicking through. It’s especially useful for campaigns.
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You will need to be logged into the CMF’s Google Analytics account for it to work though. 23. Shorten links. It’s good practice to shorten any links using goo.gl. If you’re linking to non-CMF sites, it will still give us some minimal data, like country and browser. It also just looks a lot tidier in the post. 24. Talk with people, not at them. “Engagement” is the most prominent buzzword associated with social media, but many organizations will either: (a) (b)
Post some content and ignore all comments and questions; or... Post some content and reply to every comment, or the first few comments, with stuff that just doesn’t do anything
Here are some rules of thumb: ● ●
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There’s no need to reply to every single comment on a post; if you have a popular post, you could spend hours replying for the sake of replying Don’t reply to just the first few comments and then ignore everything after that; it creates an expectation that you have time to respond to every inane thought people have about the post If somebody says something nice about something we’ve done, thank them and say that we’re glad they had that positive experience with us Respond to questions, or provide clarifications in case of any negative comments or assumptions about the content you posted If a criticism or complaint is posted publicly, respond publicly - it shows that we are happy to talk with people; if the response isn’t appropriate for all to see, publicly comment that you will send a private message
25. Designated responder. Immediately after publishing a post is the most popular time to attract comments. It’s important that we have a designated admin to keep an eye on the responses to the post, and who can post a reply accordingly. 26. Service hours. As CMF is currently run in a voluntary capacity, it is not feasible to manage and monitor Facebook activity on a full-time basis. When the Facebook page has been active for a while, and there is a clear hour of day when the majority of our audience is online, that is when posts should be made, and when there should be an admin available to monitor activity and respond accordingly. When this time frame has been determined, it should be publicized on the page’s description in order to manage audience expectation.
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