How to Get People to Like Your Post

HOW TO GET PEOPLE TO LIKE YOUR POST

by Antonio C. Antonio

December 1, 2014

Talking about the same old and mundane things like the environment, environmental advocacy or environmentalism everyday could prove to be very boring especially for a reader.  There really is such a thing as “absorbing capacity”… when there is an information overload, people tend to step away as a measure of comfort.  Another problem in making Facebook posts is “who to tag?”.  Tagging also has limitations and some netizens on social media do not look too kindly on privacy invasions.  So how do we make an environmental advocacy interesting without: (a) Necessarily overloading people with information?; (b) Necessarily tagging those who would most likely not be interested to read the post?; and, (c) Necessarily creating negative reactions from people who would not like to read the post?  How do we create enough interest to trap people to like and read the post?  Let us review the following issues:

INFORMATION OVERLOAD – How is information overload determined?  Quite simple… when the “likes” and “shares” go down.  This situation calls for either posting a very controversial current event or an out-of-the-box or non-environment-related posts to bring back interest.  However, current events in our country are often limited to negative socio-political matters… not too nice to talk about.  So there has to be other stories to tell.  Yesterday, (Sunday, November 30, 2014) I posted the photos of Ana Ivanovic, Maria Sharapova and Daniela Hantuchova accompanied by some humorous text.  (https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=993844347296192&set=a.292877187392915.90756.100000119091077&type=1&theater)  A brilliant lawyer and friend, Bert Martinez, commented: “Mas maraming interested Kuya Anton kung kasama natin si Ana, Maria at Daniela sa environmental advocacy. Ok ka talaga!!!” (More people are interested brother Anton if Ana, Maria and Daniela are with us in our environmental advocacy.)

TAGGING – Most of us will prefer to tag as many friends as possible but Facebook tagging is limited to only 50 friends; not unless another similar post is created which is quite tedious.  The task of deciding who to tag becomes daunting especially for Facebook users who have thousands of friends.  I only have a little over a thousand friends but tagging still is a problem.  As a solution, method and procedure, I would normally tag only those who posted “likes” on my previous post.

SUSTAINING INTEREST – Environmental issues and matters are not that popular.  The technical aspect of environmentalism should be narrowed down to simple and understandable terms for people to be interested.  The infusion of satire, political and socio-economic once in a while will be of great help in drawing renewed interest in continuing posts... especially environmental in nature. 

I cannot recommend a sure-fire approach to get people to like and read Facebook posts or blogs given the many preference variables and characters of individuals.  I also do not know what strategy is guaranteed to work.  All I know is that the post with the tennis superstars last Sunday, like other similar posts, did the job again.  There really is a wide array of strategies on how to get people to like your post. 

Just my little thoughts…

 (Please visit, like and share Pro EARTH Crusaders and Landscape Ecology UPOU on Facebook or follow me at http://antonantonio.blogspot.com/.)