Positive Posting – Getting More Engagement on Social Media

This week we reached a milestone in the business. Because I’m a firm believer in sharing the story from your business, I created a post on Instagram.

What happened next led me to re-think social media completely and go back to the roots of what social media’s all about, what it means to people, and why it’s not as hard as people think.

We were chatting in the office and we realised that Laura has been part of the company for five years! We’re big on the journey of Spaghetti Agency, and we’ve told our love story, our business set-up, and growth story many times before.

(We’ve been on the radio, podcasts, guest blogs, and even Twitter themselves want to talk to us because of it).

We opened the Prosecco, poured it into half pint glasses, and opened the Ferrero Rocher!

(Five years deserves some class, don’t you think?)

Naturally I got my iPhone out of my back pocket and flipped up the camera ready for a selfie. After much pushing back from Jo due to ‘bad hair and no makeup’ and unbranded clothing, I took the shot and posted it on Instagram.

… And then it happened!

Positive Posting – Getting More Engagement on Social Media.

The post got interaction almost right away and although it was hardly viral, even our Facebook Page posts (which was a share from Instagram) got likes.

The initial Instagram post got a few likes, and to be fair the Facebook Page post (which I couldn’t promote through ads as apparently I was promoting alcohol!) did OK too, but it was free reach, so all fine.

It was the posts I created next that really got my grey matter going, and that’s what I wanted to share with you.

Everyone ‘likes’ good news

15 years ago, Facebook was created. In 2009 they added the like button. Likes are passive engagement but still an indication of the post success or reach. The fact is, if someone likes a post on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or LinkedIn they’ll probably see more from you.

When I took the image and shared it on Facebook on my own personal profile it got attention. It got over 150 likes and comments. Usually these sort of numbers are reserved for cute photos of our daughter!

The post just kept getting interaction. When I lifted the content and shared it to my LinkedIn the exact same happened.

This morning I’ve even had a text from someone and several DMs saying how great they felt reading the post and well done to me and Jo, and of course to Laura.

Why did this happen? Why should you care?

Social media timelines are now largely influenced by ads and algorithms, and what you see is dependent on secret sauces and witchcraft for the most part.

But what this one piece of good news shows is that users and algorithms like a story and they like good news and smiling faces.

Breaking this down makes it a really simple crib sheet for the perfect social media content (when you can create it).

• Positive news – Facebook have said in the past that they like this and the other channels seem to push for this direction too.
• Smiling faces – selfies and especially those with people looking right down the lens and smiling catch your eye on the timelines and the algorithms know and notice this.
• Positive words – time and time again I’ve shared this in workshops, but posts with positive words do better than those without (unless you add in some clickbait fake news BS!)

… And a story that can’t be read in the first line but does intrigue them enough to read on works.

The post of 2019…

Both Facebook and LinkedIn gave me more likes and reach than I’d had on any other post that week and this could well be the most popular post so far this year.

I KNOW the numbers are meagre compared to paid ads and other content, but I’ve only been tinkering on social media this year due to a heavy workload.

The point is this:

Post your happy, positive news and story and never let the good stuff go by. Get your phone out, capture it, and tell your story on social media. Even if you’re having a bad hair day.

This is EXACTLY what the streams are looking for and it is what people love too.

The result of these posts will be our brand and business getting noticed again and we’ll have conversations and messages about this all week.

We’re all trying to be noticed, right? So this goes another step towards that.

This week I learnt that news can be cool and that the story is proof of the pudding!

Take that selfie, smile, and look down the lens as you share good news… you’ll reach more people!

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