If you’ve been using Facebook for a while now, you’ve probably realized that there’s a lot of noise in your newsfeed. And by noise I mean sheer quantities of information that isn’t valuable to you.
I like you, but hate your crochet
We all have the old high school friend, “Maria”, who is a raving fan of crochet. She posts a non-stop firehose of pictures, videos and comments about her latest creations. And because we’re nice, we don’t unfriend her. Instead, we “tune out” Maria’s Facebook updates – either by ignoring them or hiding them.
The collective effects of these types of experiences have created a society with advanced filtering capabilities. And this includes your constituents.
Filters and blinders
Like you, your constituents are constantly fine tuning their abilities to scan Web content (Facebook included) for only the useful stuff. What this means for you is that they will not simply jump in and read your thousand-word article – no matter how amazing. Instead, they’ll use some of the following approaches to deciding if your article is worth reading (or saving for later).
- They will read the title (titles are everything)
- They will scan the subheadings
- They will see if any of their friends recommend your article
- They will scan the 1st paragraph
- They will scan the last paragraph
- They will look at the pictures in your article (to avoid reading 1000 words)
Seven articles to help you create better content
If you’re nodding your head while reading this, check out:
- 29 tips to improve your nonprofit website’s landing pages
- 4 Steps to Compelling Content
- 16 Ways To Get More Comments On Your Facebook Page
- How Networked Nonprofit Use Facebook SMARTly
- Write Better Blog Posts Today
- Online engagement: old favorites and new tricks
- 12 Tips for Writing More Blog Posts
