For our business, local content is king. And majority of our Facebook posts on local content are made locally by the newsroom.

So what are our winning newsrooms doing?

More is more

They are publishing one post an hour – spacing them out gives the post time to gather engagement and stops newsfeeds being flooded.

They focus on writing the best post to increase engagement, reach and referral traffic – with the new Facebook algorithm, a handful of great Facebook posts are better than 20 mediocre ones.

But remember, content has to be shareable to begin with! Without engagement the content won’t spread but without content there is nothing to spread.

Short and sharp

Their posts are short and sharp, they ask questions, they use powerful quotes as posts. Short, sharp posts grab attention, questions encourage engagement and powerful quotes are great on people stories.

Thy are riding breaking news – we get a post up when the news breaks and then update the post or do new posts as new information/photos become available.

Finally, they save their best people stories for later in the day – this is key. There are more people on Facebook between 5-9pm so we save our best stories for this period.

We also save a lot of our UGC (user generated content) call outs for periods when people have time to engage with them.

Top Tips from our Newsrooms

Last month I wrote about what our winning newsrooms are doing on Facebook.

This month I would like to expand on that and share with you tips from our newsrooms.

Hold personal stories for after 5pm – the best time slots are 6-7.30pm but posts still perform extremely well from 8-10pm.

Sell a story on one moment or an interesting fact rather than summarising or trying to cram in all the interesting ideas.

Social media needs to be about interesting events or people. Think about the type of content you engage with.

Use direct, a little bit urgent language that isn’t too playful. This says read me now.

If necessary, tailor the post to appeal to your audience or a particular group. If you have a piece of content aimed at mothers, don’t post it at 8am or 3pm when they’re doing the school run, wait until 5 or later when they’ve time to engage with it.

Replace the photo to ensure the photo on the post is larger by removing the tease. Photos sit bigger in the News Feed, and are more easily seen and get more shares.

Use a combination of headline and post to maximise post reach.

Ask questions to encourage comments. More comments equals more people reached.

Attempt to tease readers by giving away some information but leaving a key point out. We want to give enough information to get their attention but not too little it is deemed clickbait.

Get it right, get a few people involved in drafting a post to see if someone has a better angle or can tweak a word.

Use Facebook for the RIGHT stories, content has to be shareable.

Ask: can I/would I have a conversation off the back of this content?

Be a copycat – keep an eye on what’s working on other pages.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alexia Purcell is the social media editor for News Corp Australia’s News Regional Media. She is an internationally recognised social media expert, journalist, university lecturer and speaker. You can connect with Alexia on Facebook at facebook.com/alexiajpurcell.