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The Perfect Post

Disclaimer: Elise Ho, aka “Dr. Ho” is a Holistic Health & Life Coach. Dr. Ho is NOT a medical doctor, licensed therapist, lawyer, or a bevy of other things. Products or services that Dr. Ho believes in are the only ones that she recommends. Dr. Ho may receive compensation, product, or an affiliate commission on anything you see on this site. This is a personal Website solely reflecting Dr. Ho’s personal opinions. Statements on this site do not represent the views or policies of any organization with which I may be affiliated.

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Get more social media fans and create engagement with the perfect post! Follow these 17 guidelines when you post on social networks.

Is there any such thing as a perfect post on social media? Each social network has a specific set of expectations, limitations — and pros and cons. And each one is constantly evolving in terms of potential. A one-size-fits-all strategy just isn’t feasible. This makes it more challenging for brand marketers whose goals are growing their fanbase and creating engagement with relevant content. So what’s the best strategy to engage followers and attract new ones on each site?

My recent post, 10 Tips for Better Facebook Status Updates, offered some great ideas for increasing Facebook engagement through crafting better status updates. The folks at MyCleverAgency, a social media consultancy in the U.K., did some research and formulated these 17 guidelines to help you gain the traction you need to jump start your social media engagement.

Best practices for Facebook posts

1. Keep things positive

Being positive breeds engagement and encourages sharing.

2. Provide information

The most appealing updates are ones that offer something, but don’t disclose everything — this increases the likelihood that fans will click.

3. Provide a link

If you’re going to provide a link, use Bit.lyTInyURL, or another link-shortening service so you can track how many people are clicking through.

4. Include images

Posts with images get the highest amount of engagement on Facebook, so be sure to include one when you can. The perfect size is 800×600.

5. Make your posts mobile-friendly

Use simple imagery that can be easily seen on mobile devices — 70% of your fans read your posts on their phone.

 6. Engage with users

Posts aren’t the only activities that grab attention — comments and responses do, too. Engage with people and build relationships through conversation.

7. Be available

Post when the audience is listening, not just when your business is open. This will ensure more user engagement.

See my post, Timing Your Social Media Marketing, to learn more.

Best practices for Twitter posts

1. Call to action

Give a clear call to action so your readers know what you want them to do.

2. Punctuation

Don’t sacrifice grammar because you only have 140 characters.

 3. Format

Use questions, facts, and figures to engage your audience and drive retweets.

4. Mentions

Use @ mentions to prompt influencers to engage with you and make sure you respond.

5. Retweet

Retweet relevant content for your audience. Don’t forget to leave 20 characters so people can add content or comments.

Best practices for Pinterest posts

1. No human faces

Images with no human faces are shared 23% more than those with them.

2. Multiple colors

Images with dominant colors — red, dark green, pink — are shared 3x more than images that don’t contain them.

3. Light and color

Images with 50% color saturation are repinned 4x more often than those with 100%, and 10x more than black and white images.

4. Minimal background

Use a compelling background that doesn’t take up more than 40% of your image, otherwise your repins will decrease by 50%.

5. Use red

Red or orange images are repinned twice as often

6. Portrait style

Vertically oriented images perform better than those that are horizontally oriented; the perfect ratios are 2:3 and 4:5.

18 Tips for Optimizing Your Pinterest Images to Improve SEO explains more.

Best practices for Google+ posts

1. Use hashtags

Increase your page’s reach by adding relevant hashtags. Google+ automatically adds hashtags for key/trending topics.

2. Tag brands and people

When brands and people are tagged, they receive notifications from Google+ — this can lead them to engage with your post.

3. Trending topics

Get involved with the “hot topics” to improve visibility and show that your brand is keeping pace with real-time events.

4. Use images

Use full-sized images — 800×600 — to make your posts stand out. Tiny images and thumbnails pale in comparison.

5. Find communities

Find relevant communities and contribute your expertise — your engagement will increase as a result.

This article, Create “Perfect” Posts on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+ …, is syndicated from Pamorama | Social Media Marketing Blog and is posted here with permission.

Please use the comment section below to share your tips, questions, and/or thoughts about this post.

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Naturally Yours,
Elise Ho
Ph.D., D.N. Psych.
Behavioral & Mental Health Specialist

Inspired? Pin this to your Pinterest boards.

30 thoughts on “The Perfect Post”

  1. I have been working on Pinterest more lately. I hadn’t heard about the no faces on the pins even though I don’t do it– it makes sense for re-sharing, no one wants their boards cluttered with strangers faces.

  2. Love all your ideas. I especially like how you listed each idea with only a sentence or two explanation. Some posts on other websites give a bit too much explanation and it’s hard to get through the entire list in the amount of time you have. I was listening to the Pro Blogger Podcast the other day and picked up on perhaps bloggers do this for SEO purposes. Still learning about that :). Thanks!

  3. Posting structure is an essential part of your brand, and you’ve given some nice, clear strategies for getting it right, Elise.

    The critical thing, of course, is to make sure you’re posting regularly and consistently.

    Doing that with your posting structure in mind, will certainly help your develop a strong base of support.

    1. Thank you for your feedback. You are certainly right that consistency is key. Those that visit your page or follow you on social media will lose interest if there is no consistency.

  4. Willena Flewelling

    Great tips, Elise! I have bookmarked this post for future reference, because it will be very helpful when I focus more on social media platforms I’ve only been playing with so far. There’s so much potential there, when it’s done properly!

  5. Hi. So much inoformation to glean from just this one post. Engagement is so important and great tips for the pins too. This is one post that will be referred to over and over again. Thank you.

  6. Love quick tips posts, some thought provoking ones in the Pinterest area for me, the colour ones particularly intriguing… I’ll have to remember those ones…
    I would include adding images into your Twitter section… if you look down a stream they really jump out, as not everyone uses them, and auto-posts don’t usually post photo’s… so it’s worth doing some manual posts of you have an important post!
    Great to see these snappy tips for the 4 main social networks…
    Thanks Elise 🙂
    Jacs

  7. There are good points for everyone to remember to include in their social media plan. And images are so important since so many people are visual, otherwise it will be dry and boring.

  8. Kathryn Maclean

    Great couple of little articles there Elise on What is a Great post. Publishing on my fan page for Women. Thanks. Kathryn

  9. Joan Harrington

    Hi Elise,

    Awesome post! Tons of value and fantastic tips for how to post the perfect post on social media 🙂
    Thanks for sharing your valuable tips!

  10. Erika Mohssen-Beyk

    Very good tips,Elise
    It is not easy to keep all this in mind,
    I especially do not really understand the twitter
    tweets and have sometimes trouble because
    of the characters..
    Thank you for the tips
    Erika

  11. Andy Lockhart

    Great information, I think a lot of people don’t even bother with Grammar on Twitter 🙂

    Thanks for sharing.

    Andy

  12. Chery Schmidt

    Hello Elise, Now this post is just filled with value my friend, I love how it was all put together to help make it easy to distinguish between all the different sites. Good Stuff! Thanks for sharing.. Chery :))

  13. Hi Elise,

    Love the way you show how to do a perfect post by making this short and simple list of what one has to do in order to get that post out there to attract attention.

    All of the above works! You have laid it out so great that one can take away each and every point listed here to take actionable steps.

    I think this is one perfect post!

    -Donna

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About The Author

Dr. Elise Ho

Dr. Elise Ho

Dr. Elise Ho is a Holistic Health & Life Coach with a special interest in emotional health, life alignment, and energy flow.

Elise will partner with you to align your mindset, your energy, your home and your career so that you can live your life's desire with freedom and love.

Elise offers 30 years of experience and multiple certifications and degrees including a Ph.D. in Natural Health and a doctoral degree in Naturopathic Psychology.