According to Shareaholic, Facebook drives nearly one-fourth of all referral traffic across the web. That's more traffic than Twitter, Pinterest, Reddit, YouTube and the many other major players in social media are able to generate.
Facebook marketing can help your organization achieve its goals whether that's driving relevant traffic to your website, increasing conversation about your business, strengthening customer loyalty and more if used correctly to best provide value to your audience.
Use Facebook to tap into the full potential of your marketing efforts by provide long-term value to your audience through ongoing education and entertainment on your company blog.
It's critical that from the very beginning of your blogging efforts that your blog is optimized for Facebook to ensure it's as easy as possible to share your best content across the social network.
Here's how to make your blog more Facebook friendly from the very beginning.
Set a Title Tag and Meta Description for Every Blog Post
By now you've likely heard how important it is to optimize your blog for SEO with the various elements like search engine friendly URLs, title tags, meta descriptions, etc.
Setting up a title tag and meta description for every blog post and page on your website for that matter, helps the search engines better identify the subject of your content.
By better optimizing your content for the search engines, it's likely your content will rank higher for searches related to your organization and expertise.
This is not only essential for making your blog content more search engine friendly, but these particular SEO factors impact how your blog posts appear on Facebook as well. This is just one of the many ways your SEO efforts impact your social media presence and vice versa for your business.
As seen below in an example from Red Bull's Facebook page, the article shared for their page is optimized correctly with a proper title and description.
Facebook pulls both of these elements from your blog post and uses them to help populate a post that presents users with the most amount of context for what the article is about.
Make sure to set the title tag and meta description for each blog post in order to best optimize your content for sharing on Facebook. Without this key information setup with your blog post, you'll have to enter it on your own as you post which requires another step to your marketing efforts.
Also, if a reader shares the piece on Facebook it isn't likely they'll take the time to fill out the title and description on the post they're sharing, which will lose some additional context on the Facebook posts generated about your blog content.
Be sure to set up the title and description with every blog post to give them the best chance of gaining traction in the search engines and on in the Facebook news feed.
Include High Quality Visuals with Proper Aspect Ratio
Like most social networks, Facebook marketing is highly focused on visuals. Include images throughout your blog posts in order to break up the text, provide examples to support an article, appeal to different types of learners, and help your article resonate better on Facebook.
It's recommended that the very first image in your blog post or the image used as the header of your article is optimized with the proper dimensions for optimal sharing on Facebook. This image should be 484 by 252 pixels to ensure it appropriately fills out the Facebook created about your blog post every time it's shared on the network.
If your images are optimized correctly, they'll likely still appear within your Facebook post but much smaller and far less captivating when viewed in the news feed. To give your blog posts the most visibility on Facebook, optimize your photos accordingly.
Incorporate Facebook Plugins to Simplify Sharing
Most blogs today have some form of Facebook plugin added to their website in order to make it as easy as possible for readers to like, comment, or share your blog content.
When choosing one of the many options for Facebook plugins, include buttons that are properly placed throughout your blog content, that match the design and layout of your blog and that add value to readers by making it very easy to share your blog posts on Facebook in some capacity.
First, choose from either Facebook's official plugins or pick Digg Digg, AddThis, Shareaholic, Flare or one of the many other third party companies that offers both free and paid Facebook plugins.
Next, choose the placement of your Facebook plugins throughout your blog for optimal use by your readers. Ideally a Facebook sharing plugin can follow the reader throughout an article or be located at the bottom or beginning of your post.
Experiment with the placement of the sharing plugin to see what works best for driving more interactions on Facebook from your audience. Also try using other plugins from Facebook like comments or the send button in addition to the typical "like" and "share" buttons to help incite additional sharing on the network.
Craft Headlines with Facebook Distribution in Mind
Every time your team brainstorms an idea for a blog post, think about how it would perform with your Facebook audience. Your audience across marketing channels has different preferences and consumption habits, especially when it comes to how Facebook users find and interact with content in their news feed.
One of the best ways to cater your blog content to perform better on Facebook is by crafting an engaging headline that draws interest in the news feed. Now, it's really important that your headline is exciting, but not misleading in any way. Deliver on your promises when crafting an exciting headline because there's nothing worse than using click-bait headlines to trick your audience.
The headline really determines the effectiveness of your entire piece, which is why it's important to take your time brainstorming to ensure the topic of the blog post is reflected in the headline appropriately. During your brainstorming session, think about the behaviors of a Facebook user to attempt to craft a headline that appeals to their preferences.
Of the many types of headlines that resonate with readers, these seem to be the most effective at driving interactions from users on Facebook. Cater these types of headlines to the interests of your specific Facebook audience as the topic relates back to your company's offerings.
• The List Headline - Lists on Facebook do really well since they highlight how many takeaways, lessons or insights a person can expect to gather from reading an article. Example: 10 Ways to Land Your Dream Job
• How to Headline - How to headlines inform a person that the article will likely educate them on how to perform a certain action. Example: How to Get a Job at Google
• The Positive and Negative Headline - Using positive or negative to your advantage in the headline can incite an emotional response from Facebook users. Only focus on the negative with your headline occasionally. Example: What Your Business Should Avoid with Google Image Search
• Using Facts, Figure and Statistics - Use interesting quotes, facts, statistics, figures, numbers and insights in your headline to help them stand out with your audience. Example: What it Takes to Save $18,000 in Taxes
• The Fulfilling Headline - This headline serves a person's need to achieve something, in this case a need for more information on a relevant topic. Example: What You Need to Know About the Ebola Outbreak
What types of blog posts has your business seen gain the most traction on Facebook? Have you experimented with different headlines for the same article to see which performs better on Facebook? Share your best tips for sharing blog content on Facebook below.
This article originally appeard on the Sumall blog.