Facebook status update hits and misses

Most newspaper Web producers are become accustomed to quickly getting breaking news up on the homepage, and then going back to tweak the display type so that there’s no delay – and that’s a good thing.

When these same Web producers log on to the newspaper’s Facebook page to post updates, however, it requires a slightly different mindset. There’s no going back and massaging the headline and blurb (unless you were to delete a post and then re-do it, which would be awkward). That’s why taking at least an extra 30 seconds or so to post an update with appealing, conversational wording is so important.

I posted a few examples of good vs. not-so-good Facebook updates a couple of weeks ago. Here are a handful more from the past couple of days.

The sexy mermaid: Our Facebook tease to columnist Frank Cerabino’s piece on the controversial statue is as good as it gets. A “call to action” that gets our readers involved and invites them to share their opinions. Note that, at this writing, the column itself had only 9 comments, but the Facebook update had 28.

Florida girl found alive: Nothing fancy about it, but this update has a simple, conversational style. It works.

And here are a few where we could have done better.

Repetitive wording: In each of the two examples below, we missed opportunities to make the status updates different from the items’ headlines. The Crist story, for example, has a poll asking readers to weigh in on teacher merit pay; the status update could have been a “call to action” asking fans to vote.

This Wexler item below – instead of repeating the headline – could have invited fans to view the Election Day photo gallery or share their thoughts on the vote’s outcome.

Weather: Florida weather is often predictable and repetitive, but that’s no reason not to try to spice things up a tad. Here, rather than filling the status update with numbers and stats, we could have taken a more conversational tone and said something like “Hold your skirts down today!”