5 Tips for Trying To Catch Lightning in a Bottle on Facebook

by George Konetes | Mar 25, 2014 | Digital

Facebook can be a tough proving ground, no doubt about it. And it is easy to see success, just log on and look at your news feed. What you see are the posts which have been successful. But for every post that you see and every page that shows up in your news feed, there are countless others who did not make it. Their posts lost the competition for space in your feed, mostly because they did not win the popularity vote needed by your fans to earn the right to be seen.

Everyone is looking for a formula on how to be the next sensation on Facebook. The truth is, you can do the exact same thing as someone who is spectacularly successful and still fall short.

While I cannot give you the secret formula for catching lightning in a bottle, I can give you some tips that can help you get your bottle in the right place at the right time to have the best chance possible.

1) Ask yourself the question, what makes my page unique? Why would anyone want to see my content instead of the content of others? If there is no differentiator then you are fighting an uphill battle to get noticed. If you are not unique, at least in some way, then change to become unique, or invest your resources elsewhere.

2) Ask yourself the question, what makes my content interesting? If you are unique, that does not automatically mean what you post is interesting. What is it about your posts that make people feel compelled to show them to everyone they know? If you do not have a good answer to this question, then work at it until you do have a good answer.

3) Experiment. Remember, there is no such thing as expert marketers. There are only experienced marketers, and expert testers. Think outside the box and then test. Think again, and then test again. Go back every so often and review what is working and what is not. You will almost always notice trends that you did not expect which will help you optimize for the future.

4) Make friends with Facebook. You do not need to spend a ton of time reading to stay in the loop on what Facebook is changing and how they are rewarding or penalizing different types of behavior. For example, Facebook recently decided to penalize text only posts from brands because they want more images in people’s feeds. Stay up to date on these trends and adjust your tactics accordingly.

5) Know when to ask for help. And I mean this in the most social sense. Just this morning I was puzzled about the post performance I was seeing on one of the pages I manage. So I walked across the office to one of my colleagues and told him about my conundrum. After 15 minutes of looking at the posts and talking through things together, the problem and the solution became obvious. Social media works best when worked on socially!

Taking these steps will help you maneuver your way to be the best possible position for catching, not lightning, but a big break on social media.