In our time you may not think people have as many idols as they used to, but oh do they. The greatest of them all is Facebook.

Facebook dominates the social realm. 90% of marketers regularly use Facebook and 54% say it is the most important network around. GlobalWebIndex says Facebook continues to be the most popular social platform with 69% of all internet users worldwide having an account and 62% of its users actively posting on a monthly basis. So that means if Facebook has 1.15 billion active users, 930 million people worldwide are using it. That’s a lot of people! And a lot of competition.

The question is how to beat that competition. Here are some tips on how to create engaging posts that will make Facebook your best friend:

#1.) Use more photos and videos because people like visual material rather than reading material. Use photos of your happy customers or your employees to keep your fellow Facebook fanatics engaged.

#2.) Keep your posts short because you need to engage the “scrollers” with rather short attention spans.

#3.) Create a conversation by asking customers for feedback on an item. You don’t even have to ask about your products. You could just write something silly in a post to keep

customer’s attention.

#4.) Post about upcoming sales and share exclusive deals with your customers. Post a link with a discount code or a buy-1-get-1-free as a call to action. This will create more shares and business opportunities, driving more traffic to your Facebook page.

#5.) Post exclusive information like sales events, giveaways, etc. This will make your followers feel super cool when they hit that share button and you will feel super cool as well when your sales go up.

#6.) Don’t keep your customers waiting. Always make sure to be timelywith your responses and post at times people will most likely be scrolling through their news feed. Also remember to post about holidays or special upcoming events that will be at the front of everyone’s mind.

Another great way to be timely is by scheduling your posts. This is super simple and makes it easy for you to plan ahead. Click the clock icon on the lower left-hand corner of your Page’s sharing tool and schedule your posts when most of your fans will be online. You can find out when your fans are online by visiting your Page Insights and going to the posts tab. You can manage and edit all of your scheduled posts by going to the top of your page and clicking Edit Page and then Use Activity Log.

#7.) Make a conversational calendar. An easy way for you to make sure that you’re posting regularly and keeping customers engaged is by creating a conversational calendar. This calendar will help you stay on task with what to write about week to week.

#8.) Target your posts to specific customers. Facebook is super sweet because it allows you to market to a specific audience. You can do this by clicking the target icon in the bottom left corner of your Page’s sharing tool. Then select Add Targeting which will allow you to target your post to gender, relationship status, location, etc.

#9.) Use link posts to drive more people to your website. Facebook now has bigger, more clickable link posts that enable people to access your website easily. To create a link post, go to your Page’s sharing tool, enter the off site URL, then hit Enter. From here you can customize the text and image in the post while the title, description, and image are automatically taken from your URL.

#10.) Make sure your posts are performing. Facebook has a Page Insightstab for your account that allows you to see which posts are most successful. This will help you understand your customers better and will also help you create better content.