What makes for an effective Facebook post? We’ll all have our views. But do you know what your top posts of 2018 were to help guide your work in 2019?
by Nick Moore
Whenever anyone asks me what makes a good Facebook post, I say that although there isn’t an exact formula, there are some tried and tested tips that will make your posts stand out. You may have read that a great Facebook post should have some sort of photo or video. While this may help in some cases, that’s not all there is to it.
In my opinion, for a post to reach a wide audience, it needs to follow three golden rules and be:
Relevant - posts reach further if people are likely to comment on them. Is it a hot topic?
Timely - is it about something happening right now?
Relatable - is it likely that people will think other people (namely their friends) might want to see it? How shareable is it? Does it pull at the heartstrings?
Content is key here. Have a look at this list and see how they relate to my three bullet points, and how sometimes, what you write is much more important than adding images or videos for the sake of it or condensing something down into one or two paragraphs.
Our top 10 posts…
With the exception of a £20 boost on entry number 9, the rest of these didn’t cost us a penny other than officer time.
10: Gritters
Everyone’s favourite subject during icy spells. We also used this opportunity to highlight just how much actually goes on behind the scenes.
9: Entry level jobs paying a living wage
This was about more than the usual apprenticeships. Interestingly, parents tend to tag their own children in these posts. Lots of people tend to know someone who‘s looking for a job or a new career opportunity which really helps with reach and effectiveness.
8: Changing school holidays
This is a tricky subject where nobody seems to agree. Especially if your holidays are slightly different to neighbouring local authorities and parents have children going to different schools.
7: Come work at the zoo
Another job post, this time at our exciting Tropical World zoo. Who wouldn’t want to work with meerkats? They ended up being flooded with hundreds of applications and we had to edit the post in an attempt to make them stop.
6: Jobs again!
In comparison to number 7, I think adding an image and link did help a little bit, even if only for better stat reporting.
5: A world record attempt
Here’s where the numbers start going wild… On Yorkshire Day we hosted a truly Yorkshire world record attempt at our famous Kirkgate Market. Over 400 people turned up, and the attempt was a success.
4: Leeds’ Light Night
This is always an exciting event – here we did a simple live video using a standard smartphone of a huge projection of a dragon on the prestigious Queens Hotel featuring real pyrotechnics!
3: Tackling homelessness and rough sleeping
Spoiler alert for the top entry in this list: this was a follow-up post addressing issues raised in the comments section of our top spot. It also went into more detail in regards to ways people can help.
2: Condemning vandalism
Our condemnation of this barbaric act of vandalism at one of our cemeteries attracted an understandably lively bunch of comments, resulting in it being one of the only one of our organic posts ever to breach half a million.
1: The Beast from the East and rough sleeping
Following the ‘Beast from the East’, we reached out to say that nobody in Leeds needs to sleep rough. This was an emotive yet simple message which had an incredible impact. For added context, the population of Leeds is around 750,000.
