How to Craft Perfect Posts for

Facebook, LinkedIn & Twitter

[SlideShare]
November 18, 2014 // 8:00 AM
Written by Anum Hussain | @anum

Here's how many marketers handle their social media strategy:

1. Craft update.
2. Select Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter
3. Auto-publish update to all three networks.
But there's a huge flaw with this strategy.Users interact and consume
content on each of these social media channels differently. So to
make the most of these platforms, you need to optimize your posts for
each social network.
To walk you through the mechanics of a successful status update on
Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, I developed the following
presentation. Over 100K viewers have found it beneficial thus far -- and
hopefully you will too.

But I've got to warn you: Social media is constantly changing, and while
the data and best practices unveiled here are a strong start to success,
nothing beats testing each strategy for your own audience.

For help crafting perfect social media posts,

download our 60 free templates for
creating visual social media content here.
Then click through the following SlideShare to view the entire presentation
or scroll below to read the 30 tips in non-visual form.

Facebook Best Practices

According to Facebook, on average, 1,500 possible stories are filtered
through per day on an average Facebook users News Feed -- but only 300
of them actually make it into a user's News Feed. So how do you ensure
your content is included in that 300? Let's explore Facebook-specific best
practices for posting.

1) Engage fans with photos.

Although Facebook has made moves to crack down on photo posts with
links, so far it seems that images on Facebook remain among the
most engaging posts. While I'm in no way suggesting you should post
photos just for the sake of clicks, it seems that photos are a key play for
garnering engagement on your Facebook Business Page.

2) Upload quality visuals.

While optimizing image upload size isn't a make-it-or-break-it
recommendation, it's best to have the visuals you upload fit in the specific
dimensions Facebook allows for posts. Here are three key image
dimensions to know:

News Feed Image: 1200 x 1200 px (actually uploads to 504 px, but this
maintains a quality display)

Shared Link Preview: 1200 x 628 px (actually uploads as 484 x 252 px,
but same quality concept)

Shared Video Preview: 504 x 283 px

3) Remove links from copy.

Keep your copy succinct by removing the horrendously long URL you're
sharing from the text in your post. Your update real estate is precious, and
you want to ensure any characters employed are purely for the sake of
sparking a reader's attention. Any user can click on the generated
thumbnail or title for that URL to navigate to the blog post, web page, or
any URL you're linking to -- so no need to include it in the copy of your
post as well.

4) Increase post word count.

According to a study from TrackMaven, posts with 80+ words garner 2X as
much engagement. While this by no means implies every post published
should be a novel, it does make it clear that updates that require certain
context should employ such -- Facebook users are willing to read!

5) Try different punctuation.

According to the same TrackMaven study, various punctuation uses on
Facebook garner different results. Each is worth testing for which works
best with your audience. Here are the specific ones mentioned:

Posts with hashtags (#) see 60% more interactions on average. (Click to
tweet!)

Posts with exclamation points (!) see 2.7% more interactions on average.
(Click to tweet!)

Posts that ask questions (?) garner 23% more engagement on average.
(Click to tweet!)

6) Post to the News Feed before an album.

While albums on Facebook are great for organization, including photos
within an album limits the engagement per photo uploaded. We've seen
zero engagement on photos added directly to an album. However, if we
upload that same image directly onto our News Feed as a one-time
update, it suddenly receives much more traction. I recommend first
uploading onto your News Feed, and after the initial engagement wears
off (about five hours), you can go back and organize that photo update
into one of your albums if you really want to.

7) Keep link titles under 100 characters.

When you're uploading a link directly to your News Feed, if the original
post has a lengthy title, be sure to click into the title to edit it. Any title
above 100 characters gets cut off when posted on your Facebook Business
Page, and you don't want the core message to disappear as a result!

8) Publish after work hours.

According to the aforementioned TrackMaven study, posts published after
hours (5 p.m. - 1 a.m. EST), see 11% more interactions than those
published during the day (8 a.m. - 5 p.m.). They also see 29% more

interactions than those published before work (1 a.m. - 8 a.m.). This calls
on a need to publish our weekly posts at varying times, including after
folks have clocked out of work for the day.

9) Publish on weekends.
In a similar vein, TrackMaven found that posts published on Sundays get
25% more Likes, shares, and comments than Wednesday posts -- even
though fewer than 18% of posts are published on weekends. A similar
pattern emerges with email open rates, highly suggesting the need to
experiment with week social media and email promotion.

10) Experiment with emoticons.

According to an AMEX Open Forum study, emoticons can result in a few
different results on Facebook:

Posts with emoticons receive a 33% higher share rate.

Posts with emoticons receive a 33% higher comment rate.

Posts with emoticons receive a 57% higher like rate.

LinkedIn Best
Practices
According to LinkedIn, more than four million companies have LinkedIn
Company Pages. Furthermore, 87% of users trust LinkedIn as a source of
info that affects decision-making. How do you ensure your content is
among the trusted sources? Let's look at the LinkedIn-specific best
practices.

11) Keep link titles under 70 characters.

When you're uploading a link directly to your LinkedIn Company Page, if
the original post has a lengthy title, be sure to click into the title to edit it.
Any title above 70 characters gets cut off when posted on your Page.

12) Keep link descriptions under 250

characters.
Similar to the link title limitations, the description associated with your
status update is given 250 characters before it's cut off with an ellipsis. So
shorten your meta description to properly display on LinkedIn.

13) Share links for engagement.

According to QuickSprout, including a link in your LinkedIn posts drives
200% more engagement. (Click to tweet!)

Just be sure to follow the tips 11-12 to optimize those link updates!

14) Share images for comments.

According to QuickSprout, posting images results in a 98% higher
comment rate. (Click to tweet!)

15) Share videos for shares.

According to QuickSprout, linking to YouTube videos results in a 75%
higher share rate. (Click to tweet!)

16) Publish a new status update roughly

once a day.
According to LinkedIn, publishing 20 posts per month allows you to reach
60% of your audience. (Click to tweet!)

17) Convert page fans with offers.

While you have to strike a nice balance between gated and ungated
content on all social networks, LinkedIn is a little different. Our data
shows that LinkedIn is 277% more effective for lead generation than
Facebook and Twitter. LinkedIn users are more welcoming to lead gen
content -- so long as the content truly is valuable to their success.

18) Send LinkedIn Announcements.

LinkedIn announcements can serve as a powerful tool in increasing your
LinkedIn lead generation. On the days we send an announcement from a
LinkedIn Group, we see a spike in leads for the day. We also see the
impact of that send trickle over the next day or two. Now, while you can
create your own group, you'll need to nurture a strong following to
startgenerating leads from the announcements. Another option is to
engage in a set number of groups and then find a way to use one of the
group's announcements for your own (relevant) marketing.

Twitter Best Practices

According to Twitter, it took three years, two months, and one day from
the first tweet sent to get to the billionth tweet sent. It now only takes one
week to send a billion tweets. So how do you ensure your content is seen
among all that noise? Our final best practices are all aboutTwitter.

19) Keep tweets short.

There are two reasons behind why we should keep our tweets short:
1. Data from Social Media Scientist Dan Zarrella shows that the tweet sweet
spot is between 120 and 130 characters. (Click to tweet!)
2. Providing extra character space allows users to easily retweet you without
eliminating any of your copy. If someone reshares your tweet that is
exactly 140 characters, in order to add "RT @username:" at the beginning
of the tweet, the user has to shorten or delete an optimized word from the
original tweet.

20) Include Twitter handles for RTs.

If you're sharing a quote, stat, or article from a brand or user, be sure to
include that brand or user's handle in the tweet. This will increase the
likelihood of them seeing your tweet and retweeting it to their own
audience. The more your content is shared, the more following you'll gain,
and the more your message will be spread.

21) Understand replies versus mentions.

This rule is always confusing. In order to understand how your content is
being shared, you need to understand how your content is being seen.
When you place a Twitter handle directly at the beginning of a tweet,
you're directly sending a message to a user, but it is not a private direct
message. That tweet can also be seen by anyone who follows both your
account and the account you're tweeting to. If you want everyone to see
your tweet, regardless of whether they are following both you and the
person you're mentioning, a common tactic is to add a period as a
character at the start of the tweet.

22) Use hashtags judiciously.

As if seeing #every #other #word in a #tweet as a #hashtag isn't irking
enough, a report from Salesforce even revealed that tweets with one or
two hashtags receive 21% higher engagement than those with three or
more hashtags.

23) Don't force trending hashtags.

At the time of this post being drafted, the top trending hashtag was
#ReplaceASongNameWithTwerk. I don't know about you, but I'm not sure
how to include that trend into my business tweets ... yet the
recommendation to incorporate trending hashtags still exists! Unless it's a
relevant industry hashtag like #INBOUND14, just stay away. In fact, Twitter
reveals that 17% of the top 1,000 search terms on Twitter "churn over" on
an hourly basis. So if popular search terms are churning at rapid rates,
what's the use of forcing your content into those queries?

24) Incorporate visual content.

While visuals are important for multiple marketing channels, they are
often forgotten on Twitter. An analysis from Simply Measured shows that
while photos are not shared as frequently as normal tweets (tweets that
are solely text-based), tweets with photos receive the highest
engagement. While this could be related to the fact that less photos are
shared than text-based tweets, it's important to test out using visuals.
In fact, our own analysis has shown that tweets with images see a
55% increase in leads!(Click to tweet!)

25) Don't auto-post Instagram media.

This is the mistake I see most often on Twitter -- stop sharing your
Instagram photos directly to your Twitter profile! When an Instagram
photo is shared, a user must click on the link and be directed away from
Twitter just to view the image (it doesn't appear automatically in the
feed). Instagram photos are also not indexed in your collection of Twitter
photos that are featured prominently on your profile. Data from the
aforementioned Simply Measured analysis also mentions that photos
directly uploaded on Twitter receive about five times the engagement per
tweet as photos with Instagram photos. So please, just stop it.

26) Upload photos in the proper size.

When uploading an image in your tweets, be sure to optimize them for the
actual Twitter Activity Stream. For the perfect image appearance in a
user's activity stream, upload photos 440 pixels by 220 pixels.

27) Tag users in your photos.

Twitter allows you to tag users in your photos -- you know, so you don't
have to use up your precious 140 character count with user handles.
Tagging a user will notify them of your photo upload, increasing their
likelihood of retweeting or favoriting the content.

28) Place links in the middle of your tweet.

I know this is tedious, but when possible, place links about 25% of the way
through a tweet.Data from Dan Zarrella shows that links placed earlier in a
tweet receive much higher clickthrough rates than links placed at the end
of a tweet. Presenting the link earlier catches a reader's attention faster,
and is different from the majority of tweets placing the link at the end.

29) Shorten links for cleaner tweets.

When sharing links, another best practice is to shorten those links. Not
only will shortened links host tracking information for you to assess the
effectiveness of your tweets, but they also appear much cleaner in a
tweet. A link can be around 20 characters before Twitter crops the tweet
with an ellipsis.

30) Optimize your publishing calendar.

As important as how you tweet is when you tweet. More data from Dan
Zarrella highlights two key tweeting times. His data shows that the
highest number of clicks appear between 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. Monday to
Thursday. The data also shows that the best time to get retweet is from 4
p.m. to 5 p.m. on Fridays.
With these 30 best practices under your battle belt, you'll be prepared to
completely dominate on social media.
Editor's Note: This post has been updated to reflect the latest social
media features and updates as of November 2014.