Today I got a 128-character post to show up in its entirety in the Ticker. This flies in the face of the notion that the Ticker cuts off posts at 80 characters.

I’m still seeing plenty of other posts truncated at that limit, though. What’s different about this one? The colon?

Screenshot:

Original post (May 8, 2012):

Facebook’s Ticker is the real-time stream of updates that appears in the upper right-hand-side of the page (different from the News Feed, which is your main area of content in the center of the page).

Recently I have begun experimenting with optimizing Facebook posts with these two things in mind:

• The Ticker shows the first 80 characters of a post, (not always, though — see the May 12 update at the top of this post) and
• it shows the first 25 characters of a headline.

So the goal is to get the best, most relevant and interesting info you can into that short space

Here’s an example. Notice how the entire post fits in the Ticker, and the keywords in the headline give additional info not found in the post.

More examples to follow.

In theory, using short posts with eye-catching keywords should lead to greater engagement from the Ticker.

There is already evidence that, in general, shorter posts = higher engagement:  “Posts 80 characters or less in length have 27% higher engagement rates,” according to a study by Buddy Media.

The study’s data was from early 2011 and the Ticker didn’t come out until September, which means the 80-characters philosophy was a good idea even before the Ticker.

Use keywords, save space, don’t repeat yourself

Here are some techniques I’m trying out.

• Front-loading the post with keywords: Putting the words that are most relevant and eye-catching first
• Make the post and the headline complement, not repeat, each other: Rewrite the headline if needed (paste the link in the update box, wait for Facebook to process it, then click the headline and change it) to put different keywords in it than are in the post.
• Using colons and other punctuation to save space: & instead of “and,” for example.
  
• Using superlatives and calls to action to encourage clicks and shares: “Biggest ever,” “Learn why,” “Find out more,” “Vote now,” “Get yours today”

Why this matters

You may think that it’s not worth the time to optimize Facebook posts for usability.

Usability expert Jakob Nielsen would disagree and sums it up pretty well in a post explaining optimization techniques for Twitter:

“It’s a common mistake to think that only full-fledged graphical user interfaces count as interaction design and deserve usability attention … In fact, the shorter it is, the more important it is to design text for usability.”

So with that in mind, here are a few examples of what I consider to be bad, better and good Facebook posts, with my notes on each. For what it’s worth, I wrote all of these, so I don’t feel bad criticizing them.

Examples

Here are three examples from posts on The News & Advance’s Facebook page (The N&A is the daily newspaper of Lynchburg, Virginia). All of these were posted with links back to a story on newsadvance.com.

#1 – Bad

FULL POST:

The controversial Harmony project planned for US 460 has been four years in the making, and tonight its 49-acre rezoning request will go before the Bedford County Board of Supervisors.

NOTES:

• It would probably only catch the interest of anyone who already knows what the Harmony project is (a proposed residential/commercial development).
• It doesn’t say what’s going on
• The post and the headline repeat a keyword (“Harmony”)

BETTER VERSION WOULD HAVE BEEN:

Bedford’s Harmony development proposal is one step away from reality. Learn why. (80 characters)

#2 – Better

FULL POST:

Raises for public safety workers? Maybe. Property tax and meals tax money is coming in more than expected. That could mean higher pay for police officers, firefighters and 911 dispatchers.

NOTES:

• Better than Example #1
• First five words (“Raises for public safety workers?”) tell you the issue
• The rest of the post before the 80-character cutoff teases why there might be raises: property and meals taxes
• But the headline and the post have three redundant keywords: public, safety, raises. That space could be been better used.
• “Maybe” is unnecessary; the use of a question mark shows that the issue isn’t definite

BETTER VERSION WOULD HAVE BEEN:

“Raises for public safety workers? Higher tax revenues might be why.” (67 characters)

#3 – Good!

FULL POST:

Sweet Briar College cuts: Money troubles will mean faculty lost & 2 majors gone. (It’s all there in the Ticker!)

NOTES:

• 80 characters long, so it all fits
• Front-loaded with the keywords (“Sweet Briar College cuts”).
• Explains the basics of the story in the rest of the characters.
• Headline was changed just for the Facebook posting. Original: “Cutbacks planned at Sweet Briar College.” New: “Low enrollment a problem at Sweet Briar, officials say.” That gets “Low enrollment a problem” — 24 characters — in the Ticker below the post, which provides additional info.

BETTER VERSION WOULD HAVE BEEN:

Well, it’s certainly possible this post could have been written better. But it incorporates all the principles I’ve discussed, so I’ll say it’s good as-is.

Conclusion

Optimizing Facebook posts for the ticker is a lot like optimizing headlines for search engines: Keep it simple, be mindful of the length and use keywords.

The big question: Does it actually increase engagement?

I don’t have enough data yet and there are a lot of variables to control for, including the timing of your posts and the actual content you’re posting (crime stories and anything related to municipal budgets & taxes should always do well for news organizations, but other topics can be pretty hit-or-miss).

But gee, it sure seems like it should help. And I think it’d be hard to argue against the notion that short, punchy posts with relevant keywords aren’t a good idea. Even if people ignore the Ticker, the same guidelines would still make appealing posts for the News Feed.

For now I am considering it an experiment. Please share any experiences you’ve had with optimizing posts for the Ticker and let me know how it works for you.

And finally, if it sounds like a hassle to compose a post trying to figure out whether it’s reached 80 characters or not, here’s a tool to help you out — a character counter with two fields, one for composing your Facebook post and one for checking your headlines.

Made with Cinemagram.

Being a good copy editor requires a rare blend of fastidiousness and flexibility: you must be exacting enough to remember that the AP Stylebook eschews the Oxford comma but flexible enough to upend the A1 when a department store catches fire.

Learning to program (my own current studies, in case you care, include Javascript and PHP) is excellent for honing the critical eye that sees the errant punctuation and the unclosed parenthetical.

Copy editing is, to a certain extent, subjective. English is more art than science, after all. We can argue for hours over which of two structures of the same sentence is more pleasing to the ear and still agree at the end that both were, technically, grammatically correct.

Programming, while an art in its own right, with its own form of poetry and beauty and proponents of this style or that form, is unforgiving when it comes to syntax.

Left out the semi-colon at the end of your line? Tough. The whole script breaks.

Missing a closing brace? Too bad. No function for you.

Many hours have I spent poring over code, armed only with an error console and my own gut feeling that surely the wrench in the gears is somewhere around line five-hundred-fifty-something, trying to find just what exactly is out of sorts.

I propose that any copy editor seeking to improve his or her skill take up a programming language. The aforementioned Javascript is easy to dip your toes into and can quickly lead to useful real world results.

And then we can talk about that comma — or semi-colon.

Photo Credit: www.jr247.net

There are many beautiful, clever and informative headlines published every day, headlines that make you think and make you want to read more.

Then there are these.

Let’s retire these tired headline tropes, please:

1. “X is dead, long live X” – It’s not clever anymore.
2. Anything using the word “game-changing” – Just as with the word “awesome,” things labeled as such rarely are.
3. Headlines that insist I need to know X – See comment on number 2.
4. List posts with more than 25 or so items – Find another way to organize that information.
5. Headlines that clearly fit Betteridge’s Law of Headlines – These generally mask uncertainty or are simple clickbait.

The best one I’ve found is Tozzle, which is a great tap-and-drag puzzle game. The full version has more than 40 puzzles and it’s the only game my toddler consistently loves to play.

One of the puzzles in Tozzle. You click and drag the piece from the upper-right corner to the correct spot. After a few incorrect tries, the game helpfully suggests where the piece goes.

Not only does it help him practice fine motor skills, he loves identifying the animals, shapes, and colors in it.

But here’s something you should know that I discovered after having had the game for a few months — the settings are not found within the game. You have to go to your iPhone settings and open them up from there. This is common in non-game apps but not terribly common in games (in my experience).

I guess this is so the child doesn’t accidentally (or deliberately) get into the Tozzle settings menu and change things, but for me (admittedly an iPhone newbie at the time) it meant I didn’t realize there were settings for a while.

The settings menu for Tozzle

Why is this important?

Well, there are only a few settings. But one of them can make a big difference in the enjoyment of Tozzle for your young one — Accuracy, which has three settings: Baby, Toddler and Child.

They control how close the child has to get the puzzle piece to its correct spot in order for the piece to “catch” and go in the hole.

If your toddler is having trouble with Tozzle, open up that setting and change it from Child to Toddler, or from Toddler to Baby. That can make all the difference between an enjoyable game and a frustrating experience.

If you have an opinion on Tozzle, or a suggestion for a good iPhone game for toddlers, let me know!

Footnote: Invariably, whenever a discussion comes up about toddlers playing iPhone/iPod games, someone starts up with, “Blah blah blah I would never let my child play video games so young, blah blah blah.” Just to get this out of the way now: It’s 2012. I don’t care. Thank you. Back to top.

I have combined this feature and others into a single tool, FCM Enhance. I strongly encourage you to check out FCM Enhance instead!

Updated Jan. 19, 2012:

This script for Firefox (requires Greasemonkey) or Google Chrome adds a link in the Facebook Developers area back to the regular Facebook home page, www.facebook.com.

As of January 2012, Facebook has unveiled a layout change to the Developers area, adding your name and profile picture along with the triangle-topped menu found on the regular site. While minor, this change is incompatible with the original script (released June 2011) because it breaks the layout pretty badly.

The script has been updated on Userscripts.org and now puts the “FB Home” link under your personal menu.

Screenshot:

You can download the script, see the source code and even write a review, if you’re so inclined, at the Userscripts.org page. Once there, click the “Install” button in the upper right.

Go to Userscripts.org to get the Facebook Developers Home Link script

The original script put the “FB Home” link next to the “Apps” link. But with the addition of the new profile link and triangle menu, the link added by the original script did not fit well.

However, if you are interested in seeing the previous version, it is available here.

Related:

• Add headlines to Facebook Comment Moderation Tool
• See blacklisted words better in Facebook Comment Moderation
• Facebook Comments: Turn Moderate options into row of links

It’s a minimalist, single-column layout similar to my Simply Readable style, but it uses a blue-and-white color scheme with the Arial font.

To install:

1. Right-click this link and save the CSS file
2. In Sage, go to Options -> Settings, check “Use custom stylesheet” and browse to where you have saved the file
3. Click on a feed to see the result

Here’s a screenshot using the RSS feed from The Verge:

If you like this, you may also like:

• Sage for Firefox custom CSS: Simply Readable

I have combined this feature and others into a single tool, FCM Enhance. I strongly encourage you to check out FCM Enhance instead!

Original post

This user style for Facebook Comment Moderation takes the items from the “Moderate” menu under each comment and makes them a row of links for better visibility.

This way you can see them without having to click anything when scrolling through your comments.

One of the goals is to make it easier to see when comments are not approved.

For example, comments caught by Facebook’s spam filter (whether erroneously or not) will not have a highlighted word like comments with profanities do.

But they will still be unapproved and ordinarily you cannot tell unless you click the “Moderate” menu and look for the “Approve Comment” option. At Newsadvance.com and other sites for which I manage comments, we have had a few comments that should have been approved end up staying hidden for a while because of this.

Requires Firefox with the Stylish add-on.

Google Chrome compatibility is on the to-do list.

Download the Facebook Comment Moderation Unhide Menu userstyle from UserStyles.org.

(You can see the CSS source at the link above.)

Screenshots

Before:

After:

Related:

• Add headlines to Facebook Comment Moderation Tool
• Add home link to Facebook Developers menu
• See blacklisted words better in Facebook Comment Moderation

This CSS presents a clean, single-column layout using the Georgia and Verdana fonts, both of which are praised for their excellent readability.

To install:

1. Right-click this link and save the CSS file
2. In Sage, go to Options -> Settings, check “Use custom stylesheet” and browse to where you have saved the file
3. Click on a feed to see the result

Here is a screenshot using the Bad Astronomy blog as an example:

If you see any errors or if you have any suggestions, please email me at matt (at) mattbusse (dot) com or contact me on Twitter.

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