You’ve done all the work to create a great blog post, but now how do you get in in front of the people who would benefit from it the most?
Promoting your blog posts on Facebook is one of the most cost-effective, efficient and smart strategies you can use to drive traffic back to your blog.
If you’re a business owner wondering how to drive traffic to your blog using Facebook, here are eight airtight strategies you can use to get maximum visibility and a higher rate of readers with each post.
Make sharing every single post you create for your blog a habit. People are more likely to keep up with your content on the social platforms they already use compared to trying to remember to check your blog page.
Consider each Facebook share as important as the blog itself. Think of it as your store window; you want it to be enticing enough that people really want to go inside and see what else there is. You also want it to be intriguing enough that people who are just window shopping still remember your display and maybe even mention it through word of mouth.
It’s a sad reality, but Facebook has been trending towards pay-to-play for years now. Organic reach for business page posts has plummeted over the past few years.
Even worse, algorithm changes over the past years have ensured it’s even less likely that audiences will see your blog postscompared to content from their friends and family. Thanks, bots!
But the good news is that Facebook’s options for “boosting” your post with an ad budget are truly amazing. Not only do you have razor-fine control over how much you spend, but you can also target specific user traits and demographics.
With just a limited budget per day, you can earn spots on the news feeds of people who will be most likely to consider your content interesting.
If, for instance, you create a blog post about “Best Places to Eat in Downtown Sacramento,” you can manually target people living in Fair Oaks, Roseville and other cities nearby. You can even select specific age ranges, allowing you to pitch some of the best bar/restaurant/music venue places to the appropriate age groups.
If your budget won’t allow for paid advertising for every blog post, consider boosting a few of your most popular blogs each month as you start out and then move toward consistently promoting a higher ratio to get your posts the attention they deserve.
When people are seeing your content on Facebook, they’re most likely viewing it on mobile. Make sure your post is optimized for smaller mobile screens, including limiting the amount of text you use in paragraph form.
Also, make sure any image you use doesn’t have tiny details that require zooming in. For instance, don’t share your entire infographic in a thumbnail size; crop out part of it and share that instead.
Most importantly, ensure your blog site itself is responsive and mobile optimized. If people click to read an article they see on Facebook and end up on a tiny site that forces them to pinch and zoom to read your content, most will back out immediately and not bother reading the article.
80% of people who see your post shared on Facebook won’t get past the headline. Some will keep scrolling and not bother clicking or reading.
Others will start reacting to the post based on the headline alone. We’ve all seen it happen, and for your blog this can actually be a good thing. Great headlines have a way of getting people talking. While it’s frustrating to hear commentary from people who clearly haven’t read the article, the whole point of posting on Facebook is getting engagement.
So take your time and write good enough titles so that people who actually read have an incentive to dig further. Here’s a whole post on how to write great blog headlines for Facebook, but the gist is to use phrases that get people’s attention without being too clickbaity. You can test the quality of your headlines with this tool from the Advanced Marketing Institute https://www.aminstitute.com/headline/index.htm
Most importantly, look to your own data for feedback on headline quality. Posts that have a low click-through rate clearlyshow that the headline wasn’t enticing enough. Posts with a high click or engagement rate did a good job at getting attention.
Learn lessons from past successes and failures and adjust accordingly.
Every Facebook post you create with a link has room for additional text on the Facebook post itself.
Don’t neglect the importance of the space Facebook gives you above the link! A lot of people will read that immediately after seeing the photo.
The text you add to your posts can lend context, provide a brief summary or reveal key benefits. It also allows you to spare you ad budget because if it’s written correctly, the text attracts the right people to click through to you blog post and repels the ones who aren’t a good fit for your content. In a game where every click costs, this can be a huge help.
The maximum amount of content people can see without expanding is 480 characters, but don’t feel like you have to limit your copy, the people who click to see more are the ones who are truly interested. Use any hashtags or cross-tags to other pages that are relevant to signal boost your post even further. Maybe even consider using emojis?!
Facebook posts with images get three times more engagement, which is why most posts you see from brands now include some sort of image.
Images catch our attention, and they can also begin to tell the story behind your blog. With the right image, you can elicit emotion from your audiences before they even read a single word. Once they’ve been engaged in this way, your audience will be more likely to read the actual post.
Make images as relevant as possible to the content of your posts, though. Don’t just use an image because it’s eye-catching.
Also, limit the use of text within your image. A spare amount of text can be great, but too much can prevent your boosted posts from running. Check out Facebook’s own image guidelines for more details on what they do and don’t want.
One of your best tools for marketing is the ability to split test two different versions of the same blog post.
For instance, say you wanted to promote a blog about how swimming pools add value to someone’s home. You can create one version that uses an image of a happy family. You can then create another version that uses a stock image of a pool full of money.
Now, show each version to roughly the same audience and see which one gets the more clicks!
Performing these experiments can help you get details just right for each blog post you promote. It can also reveal preferences for different demographics when it comes to post design.
At the end of the day, your own data is the best asset you have when trying to learn how to drive traffic to your blog using Facebook. Take notes on what works and what doesn’t, especially when it comes to what times you post and how frequently.
Also, A/B test post variations vigorously to find out how to get the biggest reaction from your audience.
Finally, make sure that the content you create is absolutely worth reading! Offer value, relevance and genuine quality to your readers. Otherwise, they may not want to click no matter how enticing the preview looks. You know the saying, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me eight or more times….”