Posting well on Facebook

Can Karrow post to my personal Facebook profile?

No. Karrow posts to Facebook Pages only, not personal profiles. When you connect Facebook, you pick the Page that should post.

If your newsletter doesn’t have a Page yet, create one in Facebook first, then connect it from the Channels tab of your publication with Connect a channel.

Posts appear under the Page’s name and picture, not yours. You might write Page posts as the newsletter (“we”) rather than as yourself; use whatever matches how your issue reads.

How do I connect a Facebook Page?

1. 1Open your publication and go to the Channels tab.
2. 2Click Connect a channel and choose Facebook. The tile is marked “Page”.
3. 3Click Continue to Facebook. Facebook opens in a new window: sign in, approve access, and pick the Page that should post.
4. 4Come back to Karrow. Once the connection lands, you’ll see “Your Facebook account is connected.”

Each publication has its own channels. If two newsletters each have their own Page, connect Facebook on each publication so every post lands on the right Page.

Which Page will my post go to?

If your Facebook account manages one Page, every post goes there and there is nothing to choose. If it manages more than one, a Post to Page menu appears under the editor with a Page already selected, so you can see and change where each post goes.

This matters when you run several newsletters, each with its own Page. Check the Page name before you schedule; on a wide screen, the preview beside the editor shows it too.

What tends to work

Facebook audiences often respond to posts that feel complete on their own: a story, a lesson, or a clear opinion from your issue. Give people a reason to react or comment, not only to click away.

A short numbered list (“3 things we learned this week”) or a plain, direct opinion are both easy shapes to start from. Close with an invitation to reply rather than a hard sell.

An example post

Say your issue is a weekly newsletter for small-business owners, and this week covered late payments. A Facebook post could open with “3 things that got our invoices paid faster this year”, then give each one its own short paragraph: a name for the idea and a sentence or two on how it works.

It ends with something like “What’s worked for you?” rather than “Read the full issue”. The link to the issue goes in the First comment.

That’s a made-up example to show the shape. The point, the numbers and the voice should come from your own issue.

How long should a Facebook post be?

Facebook allows posts of up to 63,206 characters, but a few short paragraphs usually read best. Many people read Facebook on a phone, where a wall of text is easy to skip.

As a rough guide, a post you can read in under a minute tends to suit the feed. If you have more to say, that’s often a sign the rest belongs in the issue itself, linked in the first comment.

Can I add images and video to the same Facebook post?

No. A Facebook post can have up to 10 images (10 MB each), or a video, but not both in the same post. Video can be MP4, MOV, or WebM, up to 4 GB.

If you have a chart and a clip, pick the one that makes the point faster, or split them into two posts on different days.

An image can help a post stand out in the feed. Karrow attaches your issue’s lead image to its drafts automatically, and you can swap it for another image from the issue with Add media.

Links and the first comment

Put your link in the First comment field and Karrow posts it as a real comment as soon as the post goes live.

Keeping the link out of the post body lets the post read as a complete thought. Readers who want the full issue find it straight underneath.

Scheduling and the final check

Click Schedule, pick a day and a time in 15-minute steps (in your device’s time zone), and confirm. Use Post now when it should go out straight away; Karrow asks “Publish now?” before it does.

When you schedule, Karrow checks the post against Facebook’s rules first. If something doesn’t fit, the post isn’t scheduled and you see what to change. Once it is scheduled, the text is locked.

If the same edit keeps coming up on your Facebook drafts, add it as a rule in the Facebook box on your publication’s Voice tab, for example “no hashtags, plain language”. It applies to every future Facebook draft.

Checking how it did

Facebook reports the full set of numbers Karrow shows, from impressions and reach to comments, shares and clicks. Open Analytics to see them per channel and per post; the page shows when the numbers were last updated.

Give it a few weeks before drawing conclusions. Comparing posts with and without an image, or lists against opinions, tells you more about your own readers than any single post.