Sneaky Tricks to Improve Facebook
As bloggers, we pretty much HAVE to use Facebook. Every day. You really can’t avoid it. We all have Facebook pages and Facebook groups, and that’s where my whole support Tribe is when I’ve got questions. So I’ve put together some of my favorite tips to you improve Facebook, so it’s not so ridiculously AWFUL to use. These tips are really helping me to boost my Facebook engagement and I hope they’ll help you as well.
Improve Facebook Groups
Being the owner of a Facebook group is a ton of work and you really need to know how to increase FB engagement to keep your group’s reputation in good standing. Back when I ran a large Facebook group of 400 members, I would do that by pre-scheduling posts. Did you know you can do that in groups? Only the moderators can do it, but they can do it for up to six weeks at a time. I put together some bright and fun graphics in Canva and I schedule them out on different days.
My favorites are Ask for Help Tuesdays:
And our Victory Fridays, where we announce and celebrate ALL victories, large and small! These are terrific ways to improve Facebook groups and boost your engagement. You want your group to be valuable to your members.
You can also create polls, do Lives, create events, welcome new members, just lots of stuff to help improve Facebook for your Group Members and keep them engaged with your content. Having good engagement with your group members is super important so that Facebook will continue to show your posts to your members.
How to Boost Engagement on Facebook Pages
These are some helpful tips I learned from Rachel Miller’s Moolah course. She runs it every couple of months, but it’s pretty pricey. However, she does have a FREE group where you can pick up all sorts of tips and she is seriously BRILLIANT in this area, so I’d do it if I were you. Just search on Moolah or Rachel Miller at the top of any Facebook page or check out her YouTube Channel. Tip: Turn your sound way DOWN. Her voice could peel paint off the wall!
In a Facebook page, consistency is EVERYTHING. Your title, your header image, your personal image, and ALL your posts should say exactly the same thing! The reader should know immediately what you are about and what he or she is going to get from you. I really, really struggled with this because my lifestyle blog is ADHD like crazy. I want to talk about ALL the things – organizing, parenting, money, cruises, losing weight, endless topics. But I was motivated to improve Facebook engagement on my page, so I narrowed it down as best I could.
So, that’s why I created my Facebook page Help for New Bloggers. In the beginning, there wasn’t even a site, just a random Facebook page I created as sort of a class assignment, but then I decided I liked having a place to talk about all my tech stuff. So here we all are.
The second most important thing is your Avatar. You make up this imaginary person who is interested in your topic (cuz it’s really sad if your imaginary friends like someone else’s page!). You think about what she wants, what problems she (or he) is trying to solve and what interests they have. And you gear all your posts to your Avatar.
The other great tip she gave us is that Facebook likes Facebook. It doesn’t like Pinterest, it doesn’t like YouTube, and it definitely doesn’t like your blog! Yes, Facebook is kind of bitchy that way. So the vast majority of your posts should be geared to Facebook. The images should be Facebook-friendly (no more than 20% text – HATE THAT!), be careful about certain words – sale, half-off, leave comment, Like this page, lose weight, ugly, handicapped. These are all trigger words that Facebook will shy away from or block completely.
You CAN share links to your blog or YouTube or whatever, but they shouldn’t be in the majority. Trust me, my lifestyle page is full of links to my site (because I’m LAZY and I have an automated plugin for it) and Facebook doesn’t like it at all. Facebook also doesn’t like any type of automated schedulers. It wants you to schedule posts right from your page – ugh.
However, Niche Neighborhoods makes up for a lot of negative crud Facebook does. When you Niche Neighborhood and yes, it’s sort of a verb, you partner with other pages of similar topics and similar size. You share each others content, comment on each other’s posts and basically act like #besties. Then when someone Likes the other pages in your group, your site comes up in the You Might Also Like list…. Very valuable to have and Rachel does some site match-making in her course, which is very helpful. But you can also find your own pages to cozy up to on your own. #BFF
Improve Facebook Conversations
So this is more of a tip for just general Facebook conversations. Did you know that you can mute annoying people, shut off those annoying game requests, and also shut off notification for endlessly long discussions? Neither did I, but I know now and I use it like CRAZY, people! Like crazy!!!
I’m going to show you my FAVORITE tip – the shut-off notification option. All of these can be found in the same place – this very powerful little button that hovers at the top of every Facebook post. All you do is click the 3 dots and it brings up lots of great options like Shut off Notifications.
Let’s say, someone posts a picture of their cute new baby, or their dog dies or something sad. You want to say something and acknowledge what they’re going through, but you know that there are going to be like 50 other posters who are going to come along and say exactly the same thing. Mama ain’t got time for that! So, you just click on that little magic button and just Click Turn Off Notifications and voila! You are free – you’re WELCOME!
Hint – You may need to turn ON notifications first and then click it a second time to turn them OFF. But hey, it works!
Next, I will show you how to get rid of those pesky friends who drive you crazy. The ones who are always posting cat photos, or trying to tell you that Mark Zuckerberg is going to give us all a million dollars. Or the Vague-booker who posts about various mysterious dramas going on in their life without any details. Or the over-sharer who wants to air all their dirty laundry online #classy
Maybe they are even a family member, so you don’t want the drama of unfriending them. But you can MUTE them, so their yucky dramas do NOT show up in your feed. I have done this with at least a DOZEN people and the beauty of it is that they’ll NEVER know.
Again, just click the 3 dots, then it will take you to a screen where you can tell them if you’d like to see fewer posts from this person, or fewer posts about this topic. This also works brilliantly for those pesky game requests too. Those are SOOOO annoying. So, the minute a new game comes out, I just mute it.
I also like the Save feature. When you find those little tidbits that have a recipe you want to do or a tip you want to post on your page. It will save a copy of it in your sidebar and you can come back to it whenever you want. Yes, brilliant, I know!
Try Social Fixer – It’s Brilliant!
I also use a free Facebook utility I’ve found called Social Fixer. It’s seriously pretty brilliant. It has tons of options. You can sort your feed properly, you can hide sidebar garbage you don’t want to see, you can block political stories or spoilers for The Bachelor. You can also see when people Unfriend you or leave Facebook altogether. That’s not normally available to anyone, I don’t believe.
Anyway, I’ve used it for years and love it. To get it, just search Social Fixer from any Facebook page. It’s run by a guy name Matt and he asks for donations once in a while to support it. I don’t mind – free enterprise is a good thing and it’s a good plugin.
I hope these tips help you to start liking Facebook again. It’s gotten pretty annoying in recent years, so I’m glad we have a few tools to make it behave itself.
Here are some other posts you may enjoy:
6 Brilliant Facebook Groups for New Bloggers
How to Get More Followers on Facebook
How to Get Noticed on Facebook
How to Get Noticed on Facebook
wow!! This is really amazing and Sneaky Tricks which helps to Improve Facebook. I like to use my facebook again. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you for your kind comments.