12 Tips for writing Facebook copy that gets you noticed

You’ve just spent a few hours writing that great content for your website. You’ve researched the keywords, the topic, and finally decided on the tack to take with the information. It’s up on your site, and you’re ready to tell your Facebook fans about your new masterpiece.

Just a minute. Did you know that your Facebook status update needs to be as carefully thought out as your content?

Approximately 1.1 billion people use Facebook, but only approximately 1% of Facebook status updates are indexed by the search engines. This means about 99% of Facebook pages are private.

Think of this. One percent of 1.1 billion is a whole lot of potential customers who can see your Facebook fan page. That’s also a whole lot of people that will also see your competitor’s fan page.

To beat the competition, your new friends, fans, and followers must keep coming back. You just can’t post a link to your newest article or blog. You have to “say something” without opening mouth, inserting foot.

Keeping your fan page alive is both an art and a science. It’s time consuming. But if you get it right, the rewards are great.

Facebook Writing Tips for Status Updates

1. Your status updates should be relevant to your fans and followers and to your business. When it comes to your business, your audience expects consistency.
2. Your updates should be friendly and conversational, but too intimate. You should inject your personality, but you should not be overly friendly. This is your time to interact with clients socially in the virtual realm, but never forget business etiquette.
3. Keep updates short and to the point. Use approximately 225 characters. Get your message across clearly and pique interest using as few words as possible.
4. Share links, photos, and videos. People are more likely to comment and share posts that are entertaining and/or visually appealing.
5. Engage friends and followers by asking questions. Who can resist commenting on a statement followed by “do you agree?” or “what do you think?”
6. Update your status at least twice weekly, but no more than every other day. If you post too frequently, your fans tend to ignore you. Some unscientific studies indicate that the best time to post is noon Eastern Standard. This make sense because it’s lunch time in NYC and Houston, coffee-break time in Denver, just before work in LA, and just getting up in Honolulu.
7. Find compelling, novel ways to say something using short news-type headlines. Linkbaiting knowledge is very useful in developing status headlines.
8. Entice curiosity by suggesting mystery. Who can resist a countdown to something? To be credible, you MUST follow through and solve the puzzle. Update as soon as the clock reaches “0”.
9. Don’t forget to optimize for keywords.
10. Don’t try too hard. People join social networking to meet and communicate with other similar minded people. They will recognize blatant attempts to sell something or to gather as many Likes and Shares as possible. If you try too hard, you come away with nothing.
11. Keep the use of “I” to a minimum. Write in the second person (you). The second person is more engaging. Writing a post in the first person is a little self-indulgent.
12. Use simple calls to actions. Agree? Give a FB thumbs up. Like this? Mama said to share. Want more? Click here.

You must get your status update writing right to be successful with Facebook. Many businesses, especially the smaller ones, find Facebook fan pages too time-consuming. They just don’t have the resources social networking requires. Resource-challenged businesses really should consider having a search engine marketing company write the updates for their Facebook fan pages and other social media on a regular basis. The rewards are just too great to ignore.

Don’t you agree?