The Secrets to a Successful Library Facebook Page

There’s a reason why Facebook’s recent 8-hour outage sent the world into a tailspin. Despite negative press coverage and despite the emergence of new social media platforms every year, Facebook is still the most used social media platform in the world. According to SocialMediaToday, the platform currently has 1.845 billion users per day and the average user spends about 58 minutes on Facebook daily. Facebook continues to be the social media giant and because so many people are reliant upon it to promote their businesses and stay connected with people, it continues to grow. That being said, let’s cover some tips and tricks to make sure that you’re getting the most out of your library Facebook page.

CONTENT

The content that you post will be the meat and potatoes of your Facebook page. Of course, you’ll want to set up your page with a profile & cover photo, information about your library, upcoming events and followers from your community. Once your page is established, posting consistent content is how you maintain this community and keep it growing. Your content should be 80% original and 20% shares of relevant content from other organizations. It might work best for you to try out different types of posts to see what resonates with your audience and gets the most engagement.. The most common types of posts are text only, links (linking to another page), photo, video or stories. Videos and photos perform the best on Facebook, followed by links. The lowest performing  posts are typically those with text only. Try to lean toward richer posts with a little extra flair to grab attention. Facebook stories are temporary, so they might be best for event reminders or fun, in-the-moment additional content. If you want to drive patrons to your website for blogs or additional information on events or resources, sharing links is the best way to do that. If you have the time and want to get creative and try video, this is the preferred content for Facebook users. Feel free to brush up on our video tips for social media to see what works best when creating short videos. If you want to be a little more spontaneous, you can always utilize the Facebook Live feature to connect with followers.

THE ALGORITHM

When you’re creating content for social media, it’s always good to get a peek behind the curtain to understand how your content is being seen by your followers. The algorithm that Facebook uses ranks posts people see in the order that they’re likely to enjoy them. This is  based on ranking signals. Ranking signals are who that user usually interacts with, the type of media in the post (photo, video, link, etc.) and the popularity of the post. If you have a popular post that has been engaged with by many people, it could reach to viewers who don’t even necessarily follow your page. However, you’re more likely to cater to the audience of followers that you do have. That’s why it’s always good to make sure they’re enjoying your content so that it continues to show up in their news feeds. Having users comment on your posts is great for boosting engagement and making sure more people see the post. Facebook is the perfect space to pose questions or ask for recommendations, opinions and suggestions. Users can respond in the comments, and maybe they’ll tag a friend. You could also ask people to prioritize your content in their newsfeed to directly let the Facebook algorithm know what interests them. You may think hashtags are just for Instagram or Twitter, but they work within Facebook as well! Using topical hashtags at the beginning or end of your post will connect your post to those topics, allowing other people to search and find what you’re posting. Posting once per day continuously keeps your content fresh and your page active, and using Facebook’s scheduling tool makes it easier to plan out your content for weeks or even months!

MEASURE SUCCESS

The Business Suite side of your Facebook page offers so much more than just publishing tools. Once content has been posted, you can check up on the engagement of it as well to measure your success. This is where you can find out what’s working, what time your followers are interacting on Facebook daily, and the type of content that they’re enjoying most. When looking at your Facebook page, you can also click “Insights” on the left-hand side to see more specific statistics about page performance. Here you can gather page views, video views, a breakdown of your most recent posts and even a comparison of how you’re performing against other pages similar to yours. Facebook makes it easy for someone who doesn’t have a deep knowledge of analytics to glance at the numbers and assess what works best for their page. Understanding what your community interacts with on Facebook will make maintaining a successful page that much simpler!