How to Avoid Ugly Facebook Wall Posts

by stratton on July 8, 2010

Facebook posting best practicesAlthough Facebook makes it extremely easy to share content with fans and friends, sometimes the quirks of the platform lead to formatting gaffes that keep your posts from looking as polished as you might like. Here are a few suggestions for avoiding some of the most common causes of Facebook Wall post ugliness:

Like and @Mention Other Pages

If you’re going to reference anyone who has a Facebook page in your Wall post, be sure that you Like their pages before you start crafting the post. This allows you to @mention them when you write the link text, which not only makes their name clickable in the published version, it also links your post to their Wall.

Don’t Include the URL In Link Text

If you paste a URL into the Publisher, a link automatically appears below it. But you can achieve the same effect by clicking the “Link” button below the text field and paste the URL into that field. This keeps the URL from appearing in the text above the link, but it still appears in small, light gray text below the headline of the link.

The only exception to this rule is if you want a URL to be embedded in a status update, because your most recent status update lives at the top of your page. In that case, paste the URL into the Publisher text field, but click the X in the upper right corner of the link field that appears when you do so. This removes the link preview but keeps the URL in the status update, and when you publish the status update, the URL remains clickable.

Edit Link Preview Text and Headline

By default, Facebook creates a headline for the link by pulling in the text from the title bar of the article’s window. It also imports the first paragraph of the article as preview text.

beforeafterHowever, you’re not stuck with either of them. By clicking on the headline or preview text before publishing the post, you can edit them to your heart’s content: trim down an overly SEO’ed headline, unbury the lede of the article—or, if you’re feeling particularly snarky, completely replace both with text of your own creation.

The character count for a headline is 100 characters; longer headlines will be truncated at the 100-character mark. Preview text can be 255 characters long. If it runs on past that limit, the published link will replace the 255th character with ellipses and cut off the rest. One way to check your character count before publishing the link is to paste the items into a blank document in Word and check the number of character (with spaces) with the Word Count feature.

Select a Thumbnail

As with headlines and preview text, Facebook searches for images on the linked page and allows you to choose one for the preview image of the article. However, not every image on the page will be imported as a potential thumbnail, and if the Facebook platform is experiencing momentary crankiness, you might not be able to import any thumbnails at all. If you don’t see a thumbnail image, delete the post and try again in a few minutes.

For the HTML-inclined, eHow.com has an extremely helpful article on what determines if a thumbnail will be imported and how to code your own site accordingly:

Add a image source meta tag to the head of your document. The tag looks like this: < link rel=”image_src” href=”http://site.com/image.jpg” /> (Remove the space between < and link) Make sure you change the href to where the image is hosted, using the full URL. In order to get Share Preview and other features to read the image correctly, you need to make sure it’s between the head tags in your html. It also helps to have the meta tags “title” and “description”.

Add Your Own Copy

Once you have your link formatted properly, add your own text in the Publisher text field (and don’t forget to @mention). The text can be up to 420 characters long if you’re posting it on your own Wall or 1,000 characters long if you’re posting on someone else’s Wall.

If you are cutting and pasting text from another source, beware of funky line breaks that may sneak in with the metadata. To avoid them, your best bet is to paste the text into a simple text editor like TextEdit and resize the window to see if there are any line breaks. If there are, delete them, and then copy and paste the edited text into the Publisher.

And now, the moment of truth: click Share. If all goes well, you should have a great looking post that contains exactly the information that you want your fans and friends to see. And if something goes wrong, the “Remove” button in the upper right corner is your best friend—click it and start over. Happy posting!

{ 0 comments }

StepChange Named a Stevie Award Finalist

by stratton on June 30, 2010

2010 American Business Awards FinalistStepChange Group was officially named a Stevie Award Finalist in the category of “Marketing Department of the Year” at the 2010 American Business Awards’ annual gala on Monday, June 21 at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in New York City.  More than six-hundred executives from across the U.S.A. were in attendance for the event, which benefited Oceana, the largest international organization focused on ocean conservation.

The American Business Awards are the nation’s premier business awards program. All organizations operating in the U.S.A. are eligible to submit entries – public and private, for-profit and non-profit, large and small. Finalists were chosen by business professionals nationwide during preliminary judging in April and May.

On behalf of StepChange and the entire Powered family, we’d like to thank the American Business Awards for their consideration, as well as our clients and agency partners for their continued support.

{ 1 comment }

So What *Is* Your Social Media Strategy, Exactly?

by stratton on June 28, 2010

Everything we needed to know about social media, we learned from South ParkSocial media can be a tricky thing for some companies to get their arms around. The reach of Facebook, Twitter, et al is far too extensive to ignore, especially when brands see their competition moving into the social space. But social media’s core tenets—spontaneity, openness and a two-way public dialogue—are exactly the sort of things that run contrary to traditional marketing strategies.

None of this is exactly earth-shattering news to those of us in the social media biz. But with that said, the opening paragraph of this recent Mediapost.com article is a shocker:

While 78% percent of corporate respondents say their company is using social media, only 41% say they have a strategic plan in place to guide such activity, according to a new study from marketing firm Digital Brand Expressions.

In 2010, the Facebook page has become what the website was in the mid-90’s: everyone knows that they need one, if only to keep up with the Joneses, but only a small percentage of brands have figured out an effective strategy for using it to its maximum potential.

Wondering if you’re one of them? If you are, you should be able to answer these five questions:

  1. What is the social voice of our brand, and how does it complement what we’re talking about?
  2. Who is ultimately responsible for the tone and content of our social efforts?
  3. What are people saying about us, and how are we involving ourselves in that discussion?
  4. How do we deal with disgruntled fans, while still encouraging an open and honest dialogue?
  5. How are we objectively measuring success, and why are we using that metric?

If you can answer these questions, then congratulations—you’re ahead of the curve and heading in the right direction. But if you’re having trouble coming up with answers that justify your investment in these efforts, it might be worth rethinking your strategy or finding someone who can help you get back on track.

{ 0 comments }

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →