5 Tips to Make Your Facebook Posts More Persuasive

Facebook can be a very powerful channel for distributing your videos – particularly if you craft your post carefully and make use of features like tagging.To make your Facebook posts more successful, consider these 5 tips which I explore in greater detail below:

1.         Tag 6 friends or influencers
2.         Make it seem easy to participate
3.         Choose a target behavior (comment/like) and ask!
4.         Connect the post to a larger goal
5.         Constrain the time horizon for action

In March I ran a Persuasive Video Bootcamp for a room full of Peery FoundationGrantees to provide them with a framework and concrete tools for more effective video distribution.  During the workshop we ran participants through a little experiment, having them post one of their micro-documentaries to their personal Facebook pages to see how many comments they could generate.The results were surprising.  In 3 hours, 16 organizations generated:*

Facebook Comments: 232
Facebook Likes: 125
Bit.ly clicks: 141
Tags: 20
YouTube Subscribes: 3

These are just the initial results that were reported that same afternoon; by now the videos likely have generated much more activity.  The results were significant, as each like and comment acts to rebroadcast the video to the commenter’s friends / newsfeed, significantly extending the potential reach of your video.

Here’s an example of my post:

We learned a great deal from the experiment about what makes a successful Facebook post.

1) Tag 6 friends or influencers
Tagging is a powerful way to elicit a response from friends or other potential ambassadors.  Those tagged in a post are much more likely to respond / take the target action, as they receive an alert from Facebook that they have been tagged.

In order to tag somebody in a post, you type an @ sign then type the full name of the person/people you would like to tag separated by commas after the body of the post.

2) Make it seem easy to participate
Tell people how long it will take to watch & take action on the video (ie, “Take two minutes to watch this video…”).  People will be more likely to respond if they understand how little time it will take them to take action.

3) Choose a target behavior (comment and/or like) and ask!
People often won’t take action unless you ask, so it’s important to prompt your audience to comment or like the video after viewing.

4) Connect the post to a goal
Articulate an organizational goal – or a campaign goal – for participation so that viewers know why their action is meaningful.

5) Constrain the time horizon for action
Scarcity motivates action.  So when people think they have limited time to take action (think infomercials), they will be more likely to take action now rather than delay.

Here’s a very basic template you can use / adapt to suit your needs:

“Take 2-minutes to watch our micro-documentary and comment / like the video if it strikes you. Every comment / like helps us share our story with the world – take a second to comment / like the video and help us reach our goal of 15 comments / 15 likes in the next 24hrs!”

Next time you have media to share on Facebook that you’re hoping reaches a wide audience, make sure to post to your personal Facebook page in addition to that of your organization — it can have a significant impact.