Get Savvy with Post Insights

This is the total number of people who viewed the post for at least a fraction of a second. Basically this is the number of people your post actually reached.

Share the post in different groups

• Be sure to choose especially active (and relevant) groups.

Tag managers of other teams and higher ups in the post

• This will generate a notification for them. Don't forget to ask them to share the post into their own team groups.

Tag your own team in the post comments

• Tagging someone doesn't just make them more likely to see the post in their News Feed, it also makes people who engage with that person often more likely to see it as well.

Make sure you’re posting it at the right time on the right days

• Groups admins can check the group’s insights to get a better idea of the best days and times to post. Never post on a Friday or outside of business hours. And don’t forget that you can schedule posts in advance if you need.

The number of comments that have been left on your post is a very important number. Posts with comments are more likely to show up in News Feed and make people more likely to stop and comment themselves

Ask people to answer a question or share some thoughts in your posts

• Put the question at the top of the post and also leave it as the first comment on the post to kick things off.

Respond to the comments people leave

• If people see that you’re actually responding, they’re more likely to comment. Plus if you tag someone in a comment, they’ll usually leave a comment in return.

Tag more people

• People you tag are more likely to see the post and to feel obligated to comment on it.

Give recognition

• Always add a “Thank you” section to your posts about projects or other work completed. Tag the people who helped out in any way AND their managers. They’re both likely to comment if you do.

Use human language

• People generally don’t feel comfortable commenting on overly formal posts. But they do comment on posts that sound like they were written by a person (especially if you sound excited or happy in the post).

Learn to love the word "You"

• Talk to the reader as an individual: “This will help YOU out.” “We listen to YOUR feedback.” People are far more likely to respond in comments when they feel like the post was written for them.

This is the number of times people used the like, love, care, haha, wow, sad, or angry buttons. Posts with lots of reactions are more likely to show up in News Feeds. Emotional reactions are also a great sign that people care about what you’re saying.

Pick a reaction and write for it

• Choose a type of emotional reaction you want to get up front (wow, love and haha are great ones to focus on) and use language in your post that really inspires that reaction.

Ask for more reactions

• Turn the reaction into an explicit way for people to give you very quick feedback: “LOVE this post if you want to see us do more [blank]”, “Like this post if you agree with the direction we're going in”, etc.

Double check your audience

• Make sure you’re posting in active groups, that the people in the group care about your topic and that you’re writing with their needs in mind (not just yours). The more tailored the post is to the audience, the more likely they are to engage with it.

Be conversational

• More conversational tone doesn't just help you get more comments, it also makes people far more likely to react to your post. Emotive language works well. Dry language doesn't.

This is how much of your post the average person is reading, based on how long they spent looking at the post and an average reading speed of 300 words per minute. It only looks at people who spend at least 3 teconds with the post in view, and it’s one of the most important ways to figure out if your posts are working or not.

Format Everything

• People won’t read giant blocks of text. Use your headers, bullets, and quote blocks to format everything. Make it a point to mix up the formatting to keep it visually interesting and help people read through more easily.

Boring never works

• We’ve mentioned this a lot already, but it matters. Dry, stuffy, academic, or jargon-y wording turns people off immediately. Humor, excitement, and conversational tone makes them want to keep reading.

Lead with the good stuff

• Give people a reason to stop and read by leading with impressive results, accomplishments or goals that people are excited about (use bullets). Never put must-read information at the bottom of a post.

Shorten the post

• Cut out the filler words and focus on the most important things people need to know or do. If needed, attach a file with more detail so you can focus on the highlights in the post. If you really have a lot of information to cover, consider putting it into a Note and using your post as a summary.

TL;DR

• Add a TL;DR (Too Long; Didn’t Read) at the top of the post with a key takeaway or a one sentence summary of the point of the post to entice people to keep reading.

Write for Phones and Tablets

• Posts can look a lot more overwhelming on phones and tablets than they do on computers. If you’re posting for people who mostly use Workplace on their phones, make sure you know what your post looks like in the mobile app before you hit post.

If a post has at least 10 comments, Workplace will look at the words people are using to give you a sense of how positively or negatively they felt. It’s a scale of -1 to 1, with 1 being very positive and -1 being very negative.

Add a quick video

• Tone gets lost easily in text. Record a quick video of you going over the info in the post and use your tone of voice and facial expressions to show your excitement or empathy.

Check your post language

• If you don’t sound excited, they won’t leave excited comments. If you don’t sound empathetic, they will leave negative comments. Think about the kind of comments you want people to leave while you write the post- it will help. A lot.

Tailor to your audience

• When it comes to big news in particular, not everyone is affected in the same way. Don’t try to write one post for everyone. Make a few posts in different groups that talk about how they’re affected by the news. It’s easier to make sure things are landing well.

Give people some notice on tough news

• If you’re saying something that people might not want to hear, talk to them about it in a meeting first. Make sure they feel heard, respond to their concerns and *then* make your post.

This section is only going to have useful information if your Workplace system admins are filling in everyone’s profile fields. If they haven’t been, then this is going to be blank or might have random entries that people typed in themselves. If your system admins did fill these in, you’ve hit the information jackpot. You’ll be able to see how different people in your organization have (or haven’t) been engaging with your post.

Figure out who should be engaging with the post (but isn’t)

• If they should be seeing the post but aren’t, start sharing your post into groups that they tend to be active in.
• If they are seeing the posts, but the engagement is really low for a particular set of people then you may need a separate post that's tailored to them. You can also tag managers and co-workers in those parts of the organization and ask them to share your post in their groups for you.

This graph is here to give you an idea of how the post has been consumed over time, and it can be used to get a great sense of which days and times are best to post.

You can look at the information overall or break it down by department, manager, and job title if your organization is filling those fields in for people.

Test different days and times of day to post and look at how they perform over time.

• There are usually particular days and times of day where people are far more likely to see posts (though it can very by group). It’s generally true that posting on Fridays is a bad idea for desk workers (but might not be for people who don’t work at a desk). And posting early in the day tends to work better than posting later in the day. But your audience is unique, and the trick here is to learn what works best for them.

Check the line daily for the first few days

• If it starts to drop off, go share it into other groups, or go to the comments and start tagging people in them to create a notification for them. Keep in mind that the older a post is, the less likely it is to show up in News Feed. Posting in new groups is a way of "refreshing" the post.

Wait for the line to go down before reposting the same information to the same people

• Don’t post repeat information to the same group(s) while the post activity is still strong. Wait for things to drop off before you jump in with your next post, if possible.

Double check your new tricks are working

• If you’re trying some of the strategies we've talked about to get more people to read and engage with your posts, pay attention to how the line changes when you do. You want to see it go up steeper and faster and stay high longer. Comparing the curve of the line for different posts can help you figure out if what you're doing is working.