If you want more traffic from Facebook, you have to focus on getting more shares and likes, right? Although that’s true, it’s not the only way to generate more traffic.

What if I told you that you could get more people to click on your Facebook postings?

On average, 6.5 people out of 100 click on your Facebook posting. But with a few tweaks, you can get more people clicking on your posts and heading over to your website.

Here’s how:

[1] Call to action

Did you know that images within your wall posts are clickable? For that reason, you should consider using an image that contains a call to action versus one that just looks like a stock image:

Can you guess what happens to your click-through rate when you add a call to action like in the image below?

On average, we see a 14% increase in clicks. That’s not too bad, considering that all you are doing is adding a call-to-action button within your main image.

[2] Share your thoughts

When you share a link, you don’t want to just post a link with an image. You want to customize your posting and make it more personal.

I know I break this rule a lot despite the fact that my team continually tells me to add my two cents when sharing a link.

A good example of this is Amy Porterfield. If you look at her status updates, you’ll see she adds a bit of text to personalize them.

Can you guess the difference in click-through rates between having some text introducing your posting versus not having any? When we tested this, the difference was 8%.

So if you are going to post a link on Facebook, add your opinion. It doesn’t take more than a few seconds… and the increase in clicks makes it well worth it.

[3] Image colors

What image colors do you think get the most clicks? Most of the articles you read around the web will talk about one specific color converting better than the rest.

And although it may be true for some websites, it might not be necessarily true for yours.

You have to test how image colors affect your conversion rates. What works on Facebook, according to my experience, is drastically different from what works on most websites.

In general, on your own website, images and call-to-action buttons that are high in contrast and stand out tend to get the most clicks.

But with Facebook, I found that images that blend in tend to get more clicks. Images that contain a lot of white, grey, and blue colors, like the hexadecimal color #4c66a4, tend to generate the most clicks.

When using the colors described above, we saw a huge lift in our click-through rates. We were able to increase clicks by 16% to 28%.

[4] Open Graph

Chances are you haven’t heard of Open Graph. In essence, it provides you with meta tags to place on your website to ensure that URLs get shared correctly on Facebook.

When you don’t use them, sometimes when other people share your URLs, your posts look like this:

And when you do use the correct social media meta tags, Facebook-shared posts look like this instead:

Can you see the difference? One looks pretty, and the other one doesn’t.

Out of all the things we tested to increase click-through rates, this one had the biggest effect. If your URLs aren’t showing up correctly on Facebook, you can increase your click-through rate on average by 39% by using Open Graph.

[5] Post timing and frequency

Did you know that your posting frequency on Facebook affects the number of clicks you generate?

Posts that go up on Thursday and Friday tend to get the most engagement, while posts shared on Monday through Wednesday get 3.5% less engagement.

Timing also has a huge impact. Some people recommend that you post between 9 a.m. and 7 p.m., but that window is a bit too big if you ask me. Posting at 1 p.m. tends to generate the highest number of shares, while posting at 3 p.m. generates the highest number of clicks.

Your posting frequency also affects the number of clicks you receive. We tested posting with different frequencies, from multiple times a day to only once a week. What we found is that posting once every other day will get you the highest number of clicks per post. When you post multiple times a day some people start to ignore what you are sharing.

To recap, if you want to get the most clicks, you should:

• Try to share your most valuable posts on a Thursday or Friday
• Post at 3 p.m.
• Space out your posts every other day

[6] Engagement

One interesting thing we noticed is that posts with more engagement received a lot more clicks.

What I mean by engagement here is comments. In particular, I am talking about comments left by you.

Let me explain… When someone else leaves a comment on your wall posting, you can either like the comment, delete it, or respond to it. We found that liking the comment didn’t do much, and, of course, you wouldn’t want to delete it as that would be just rude.

But responding to each and every comment had a huge impact on clicks. Status updates that contained responses received 9% more clicks.

So the next time you post a link on Facebook, make sure you respond to people’s comments. It only helps.

[7] Headline length

You already know headlines affect click-through rates, but have you tested headline lengths on Facebook?

We found that the ideal length for blog headlines tends to be the ideal length for Facebook headlines too. In essence, the shorter the headline, the better.

Now, of course you can’t have a one-word headline, but ideally you should keep it to under 80 characters. Similarly to the data from the Fast Company article I linked to above, we found that Facebook posts that contained shorter headlines received more clicks and engagement that those with longer headlines.

On average, updates that contained headlines with fewer than 80 characters tended to get 15.4% more clicks.

Conclusion

The next time you are considering posting on Facebook, ask yourself… are you following the 7 tips above?

If you do start following the tips above, you’ll notice more traffic from Facebook. But don’t just take my word for it — try it out yourself.