The Art of Writing Great Facebook Status Updates

If you aren’t sharing your content on Facebook, you’re missing out on a big opportunity. Why? Because they have over 1 billion active users!
Now by no means are you going to be able to reach 1 billion users… over even 1 percent of them. But the beautiful part is, if you even reach .01% of their total user base, that’s still a huge number.
So how do you increase your odds of grabbing the attention of those 1 billion users? Well, you need to write great status updates. Here’s how you can do so:

Be short and to the point

Unless you are writing a personal rant, people don’t prefer to read long status updates.

The graph shows that people prefer status updates that are around 225 characters versus ones that are longer or shorter. One of the main reasons that people don’t prefer status updates that are too long is that over 33% of Facebook users are viewing it via a mobile device. Due to mobile screens being small, it would be difficult to read long status updates.
You also don’t want to create status updates that are too short, as you can’t provide any real insights in a short status update. When writing them, keep the fluff to a minimum because it’s already hard enough to fit in a ton of useful tips and data in 225 characters. For this reason I recommend that you only try to prove one point or provide 1 tip within each status update.

Don’t forget the face in Facebook

The one thing that you may have forgotten about Facebook is that it was created so that you can keep tabs on your friends and family… especially the ones that don’t live right next door to you.
So what kind of status updates do your friends and family want to see? I surveyed 1291 Facebook users and here’s what they came up with:

• Your life – your friends and fans are the ones following you. So they want to know more things about your life. And not just updates containing text, they ideally want to be able to visualize what you are personally experiencing.
• Advice – people want to continually learn more, so the more advice you can give them, the better.
• Experiences – what are you doing, where do you hang out, and where have you been? People want to see check-ins and pictures of places you go to on a regular basis or are visiting.
• Entertainment – who doesn’t enjoy a good laugh. If you have a funny story, joke, or anything that can help people pass time, add it to Facebook.
• News – if there is anything news worthy out there, feel free and share it. It doesn’t just have to be related to things like the world or politics… it could also be about things like a sports event such as the Superbowl.

And to further back up this data, we analyzed 682 status updates and noticed that the ones that were about your life contained 247% more comments than ones that weren’t about your personal life.
This is important because Facebook has an algorithm similar to Google’s. Facebook’s algorithm is called Edgerank and it looks at how fast a status update obtains new likes, shares and comments. The more likes, shares, and comments it gets in short period of time, the more people Facebook will show the status update to.
Although Edgerank sounds simple, the algorithm is much more complex. For example, comments have more weight than likes, as it is easier to click the like button than it is to write a comment. And it doesn’t stop there… if a family member likes or comments on your status, it holds more value than if an acquaintance comments.
So your goal should be create updates that get shares, likes and comments.