Content Strategy: Posting Procedures in Facebook

One way to provide value to your Facebook community is to write procedure posts. You can deliver needed information right to your users, right where they live, right when they want it. The format definitely lends itself to preparing instructions in a clear, brief manner – and allow commenting as well.

I’ve been writing procedures in Facebook for a while. There are definite considerations to keep in mind. I have some lessons learned to share. The main points to consider are when to post, what to post, frequency, and what may elicit most comments and keep your page more visible in fan news feeds. Each is important in its own way.

This is a long post. There’s a lot of info to cover.

First: A Reminder

One of the most important aspects of social media to keep in mind is this fact:

You are very limited in the number of posts and tweets you can share. You have to make each one count.

It’s easy to overwhelm your followers and customers with too much information. To get and keep their attention, and tell why they should follow you instead of someone else, you have to be prudent in content choice.

Tweets fly by and disappear. Expect them to last no longer than 24 hours – if that. Even with hashtags, they can disappear quickly. Facebook posts have much more staying power. Plus, fans can comment on each post. A very important consideration in Facebook is the EdgeRank algorithm used to determine frequency of display in a fan’s newsfeed. It’s a known fact that the more comments you receive, the more likely it is that your page displays first. This is a very important item consideration, as you’ll see later. If you don’t pay attention to that, all your work may be for naught.

While Twitter is best for broadcasting news and information and handling real-time issues, Facebook is used to build community. You can provide more information. More than a tweet, but less than a website or blog post or comment. It’s a great option.

Determining a Posting Strategy

Given all the factors noted above, just how often should you add a procedure in a Facebook post? It depends on the page purpose.

Dedicated page for docs and support

Frequent. However, not too many. Because steps are included as comments, fans may or may not feel inclined to leave another.

Mixed-content page (news, articles, procedures)

Varied. This is where it becomes a judgement call. It’s definitely more art than science. Factors to consider are described in the next sections.

My page falls into this category. I’ll always be adding procedures periodically along with basic posts with links.

Why Add a Procedure

There are a number of reasons why you might want to add a procedure in Facebook. You can be proactive in assisting fans and customers before they need help, and be there to address real-time issues. For details, read on.

New Feature

Facebook added the tagging functionality one day. You can now include links to other pages in Facebook by using an @ sign. It’s a great feature. One of my favorites, in fact. I wanted to get that news out to my fans quickly while the news was hot, and give them the steps they needed to implement that. I bump this into more of a real-time category. It’s not needed immediately, but needs to be there within the next 24 hours.

Sometimes, however, it’s good to sit on a new feature for a few hours or a day. Sometimes the story evolves and you may need to provide updates through the day. An excellent example of this is the recent feature rollout that enables users to change their personal profiles into business pages – which have limited functionality. With a business page, you can’t write on friend’s walls and complete many basic functions. It’s very limited. For some who switched their profile to a page, there were definite problems.

Because I was familiar with the limitations of business pages vs. regular fan pages, an immediate red flag went up for me when I first saw that new feature. “Uh-oh,” I thought. “Probably not always a good idea.” Even though it was being touted on many sites as a good step to take, it was in reality very risky for many people, and probably not always the right direction to take. It definitely is for some situations, don’t get me wrong. It is not the case for everyone.

I followed my gut on that feature. I sat on it and watched it through the day. Sure enough, it turned out to cause many problems for many people. It wiped out personal profiles and prevented restoration of those profiles. There was no undo. That’s just one of the problems. A major one, though. If those people had other pages linked to their profiles, then whoosh! They would not be able to access the pages they administer. The feature was disabled for a few days, but is available once more. So if you’re considering that, be careful and make sure it’s what you want to do.

In this case, because it was so important and immediately needed, I ended up linking to a post on another site that had a great deal of information about it. More than I could have provided. Here’s the post:

Just realize that sometimes it’s better to link to a more comprehensive post somewhere. Perhaps an industry insider might have good, official information more quickly. They might have some official connection with a company to get the actual story correctly – and the details. Recognize your limitations and act accordingly. Remember that your ultimate goal is providing value to your fans. If that means linking to a better source, then do so.

This is especially important for a situation such as this. It could have been disastrous for some people. I just wanted to get the news and warnings out ASAP before someone made an irreversible choice they would regret. It was a fluid story through that day. One I definitely watched continually. One of those be-prepared-to-update-constantly kinds of days. Sometimes you just have to tread water a bit and scope things out before riding in a wave.

This is also another example of why it’s so important to be familiar with all aspects of social media. It’s not a hobby. It’s serious business. If I hadn’t been aware of the differences and limitations with business pages, I may have written instructions or given bad information to my fans. What if I had just passed that on? What if someone wiped out their profile based on what I wrote, even though it was being discussed in many places as a positive? They may never come back to my page – or worse. Writing procedures is a big responsibility. You have to both provide information and protect people.

Goal: My overall goal is to have my page be a go-to spot for instructions and information for implementing new features.

Update 5/14/11: Good news regarding reversing erroneous profile-to-page migration. It may be possible to undo that change. At least, you can request reinstatement. Here’s an article about it:

Facebook to Help Users Burned by Profile-to-Page Migration

Good-to-Know

My audience is now very broad. It’s everyone, basically. All users of social media. What’s at the top of many people’s list for Facebook? Privacy. I added the following procedure because, in my mind, it’s always good to remind people of this basic setting. It’s one of the most important settings, I think. Something came up that day for a task I was completing that made me think of those settings, so I thought it would be helpful to all my fans. You’re right in the app, so it’s easy to have the procedure in view and go change the settings.

Goal: Give people the information they need – which they don’t necessarily know they need. In this case, these particular privacy settings are very important. It wouldn’t surprise me to find that many people aren’t aware of the settings. You can do your customers and fans a great service by pointing out some information they would definitely benefit from knowing, of which they may be unaware.

Ongoing Support

It’s called customer service. Give people assistance before they need it. Just provide regular updates. Perhaps a tip each Monday. Or a focus on a particular feature one week. Those are but two examples. The possibilities are endless. With this in mind, you can both market and teach at the same time. Make it easy for your customers and fans.

Goal: Build community and relationships. Show that your fans and customers matter.

Real-time Support

This should be self-explanatory. If you have something big happening one day, or people want information on-the-spot, it’s easy to quickly write up a procedure. Also, it’s just as easy to include a link to a specific spot in comprehensive documentation that’s on your website (or wherever). That enables you to quickly provide your customer with a quick fix, plus point them to the exact place in the docs that provide any details they need. Teamed up with tweets, this is one powerful option.

Goal: customer service. Provide help at the moment and place it’s needed.

When to Post: Day and Time

Another important consideration is determining the optimum day and time to post. You don’t want to leave this to chance, as you are limited in how often and how much you should post. You definitely don’t want to repeat items on Facebook very much. While you can repeat to some degree (and only very carefully – and rarely) on Twitter, I’d be careful on Facebook. Of course, it depends on the page and its purpose.

I’ve read for some time that it’s perhaps better to post in the evening hours, as that’s when most people access Facebook. Just the other day, I ran across an excellent post about that. So please take a minute to read it for great insight and recommendations with industry-specific information.

How to Improve Engagement on Your Brand’s Facebook Page

Of course, keep global considerations in mind. Posting times also depend on where your customers reside.

How Often to Post

Ah, now here’s the really tricky part. In 2010, Facebook initiated use of the EdgeRank algorithm. What that does is score your page based on a number of factors. To meet your goals of helping your fans, your customers, they have to see your posts. They may be essentially blocked without your knowledge. So you need to know how this works. Details are in these articles.

How Brands Are Getting Lost on Facebook

EdgeRank: The Secret Sauce that Makes Facebook’s News Feed Tick

EdgeRank: What Does it Mean For Brands

With more and more pages being added by the day, you’re definitely going to have to rise above the noise. You don’t want fans to hide your page from their news feeds. You also need to provide just enough helpful content to assist and build your community. If you overwhelm with too much content, or post information that’s not very useful, the fans could hide or unlike your page, never to return.

My strategy as of this moment is to post one per day, or one every few days, or sometimes several in a day. I strive to make each count. While I’m admittedly in a bit of a research mode these days and am trying various options, my main goal remains the same. Provide excellent information to help people maneuver through the social media landscape to benefit their work and personal lives. I have an overall strategy, but am perfectly happy to veer away sometimes to share some excellent item I come across (such as the Google Analytics overview video I found a few days back), and something I think is important (like the security procedure).

My thought: be flexible. Be choosy about your content. Be respectful of your fans’ time, loyalty, expertise, and willingness to participate. And have some fun! It is Facebook, after all. While it’s definitely serious business, you can be lighthearted to some degree. Facebook is one big judgement call. There are so many variables.

Keeping Up With Changes

Facebook changes constantly. They’re always rolling out some unannounced new little feature or tweak. A couple recent ones were the tagging feature, and the sudden switch to just using the Enter key to submit comments. Just be prepared for the unexpected. Just in the short time I’ve been writing procedures there, the changes that have been made already made an impact on my writing strategy and style.

To keep up with big changes, watch the social media and tech news sites, and Facebook company pages and blogs. There are many from which to choose. These are some of my favorite references.

Mashable
Social Media Today
Social Media Examiner
Alltop Facebook Page
Inside Facebook
All Facebook

Facebook Company Pages
Facebook Pages
Facebook Live

Writing Styles

Now to the meat of the story: the actual writing of the procedure itself. I’ll run through a quick chronology of how my posts evolved, and my thoughts on pros and cons.

Title Only in Post

This was my first try. It’s common in tech writing to have a brief title that’s set aside so you can easily scan on a page. So I tried out having only a title in the post itself and included information as a first comment. Hence, this first cut at a procedure.

 

I’ve since decided that I don’t like it as much for two reasons. One, comments don’t always display, as you’ll see in a moment. Also, there isn’t any information to go along with it for users so they have an idea of the content and purpose.

From a single sourcing perspective, it could work well. The information is chunked into separate fields, so to speak. The post title could be a field in a database, as could each comment. The trick is to be able to import and export the information. It’s probably possible to get that via an API, but I haven’t gotten that far yet. I do know for sure that there are apps you can add to your page that take the content off the page and store it in a database off Facebook. Another consideration I need to check out and test.

Another note about this option is that, while just the title itself might throw off some users, it might be preferable in some situations. If you use it consistently, users would learn that. Then, yes, they could scan through their feeds. That’s a consideration. Keep that EdgeRank scoring in mind. Maybe if you have some shorter posts, your users may be more inclined to keep your page active in their feeds.

My Current Favorite

On to version 2.0. I moved the information to the post itself so comments only include steps. I also changed the structure of the intro. Here it is:

How-to: (Title) … (description)

My feed is a mix of procedures and content. I wanted to identify up front that it’s a procedure, primarily for scanning purposes. I also included the ellipsis to separate the text from the title. I think it works. Try it for yourself with and without an ellipsis. You’ll see what I mean.

What I like about this is that people get all the basic information they need right in their post. And remember my note about page changes being slipped in unannounced sometimes? One came up suddenly. Comments, for some reason, weren’t displaying in the news feed in my personal page. So my note about “follow these steps” was left hanging. There weren’t any visible. Oops! From now on, I’ll say something like “Check the steps. If not visible, expand.” Expect the unexpected. Also – keep it to three comments/steps if possible. Once you hit four, the comments list collapse.

Another test on my list is to add a comment asking for input. Given the 3-comment setup, I may just add it to the last comment/step instead of setting it out. I don’t know. I’ll try both and see what happens. Then I have to check that hiding-of-the-comments business anyway. It never ends!

While I like this the best so far, it definitely does not lend itself to single-sourcing and export/import with a database. All that varied post content breaks rules of normalization. Sigh. However, given that I’m not using straight procedures for all my content on Facebook and given the posting factors such as number and frequency, I’m not sure that matters. Perhaps these can be set up separately. You wouldn’t have many. But I might change my mind after testing it more.

Summaries

I still like this format. However, I would change wording style in the post. Now, since I use a How-to prefix, I’d probably add a List prefix for these. This was one of my first ones, so don’t be too harsh on the bad intro. You have to experiment to find what works for you.

Summary

As you can see, there are many considerations regarding addition of procedures to your Facebook page. Procedures are easy to write and add to a page. Just keep all these items in mind. Go forth and meet your fans and customers. Hand-deliver helpful information right to them!

Tips for Content

- Useful information – not fluff
- Helpful, not harmful
- Posted at the best day and time for optimal exposure
- Written in a style to get the point across most efficiently 

More Information

I’ve got some other places you can look for information.

Like my page!

Facebook group for page admins
My brand-new LinkedIn group for sharing tips and information for managing pages. Join in and like the group!

Writing Procedures in Facebook: An Example
My first post about my first procedures written in Facebook. (This title was revised from the original name, but the content is the same.)

That’s it for now. Stay tuned! Like my page to see what other tests I’ll be running. If you have any thoughts on all this, by all means – leave a comment. Thanks!