I guess it's worth one more attempt to make facebook work for me. :/
I did notice that images I posted up on my page got more attention than any links could. Should I just post sample pages and then link to my site?
You sort of have to figure out what works best for you. I think worrying about click through initially is less important than fostering engagement because that is what is ultimately going to increase your overall reach. So I'd say if you are posting sample pages, make sure they're engaging - try to push your readers to comment, like and share.
You want to start having readers commit to actions because that directly translates to growth.
Yeah, I think most people with facebook pages link dump often, which is fine. It definitely has a purpose and keeps things uniform, but I don't think that scales that well in terms of growth. You should link to your facebook page so we can take a look!
Yeah I noticed an increase in likes when I started mixing the posts up between links and images. I need to do that more! Oh and here's my FB: https://www.facebook.com/JesnCin7
This post was flagged by the community and is temporarily hidden.
Thank you so much for all this info, @michaelson ! I'm quite a bit behind the times when it comes to social media (just now I learned how to send a FB message! X'D ). I'm the least socializing person in real life so even making some presence here on Tapastic took a lot of courage, but it was thanks to my supportive readers. (Tapastic was the first site I became active on after years of not doing anything online).
I'm still most active here on Tapastic because I feel safe here somehow >.> But I've been trying to work out Twitter and this info really helps!
The idea of creating an online persona is very interesting, I think it's what happened to me because I still can't understand how I can be so "sociable" on this site 
Awesome tips! I currently use Bit.Ly but haven't really tracked anything using a spreadsheet and don't schedule posts either (I schedule them manually by writing them down in my diary to post on the day :P). I noticed that image posts tend to work the best on Facebook and Twitter too, they make your page look nice and colourful 
I might try that spreadsheet idea, likely not forever, but for a period of time to see whether I'm on track or not with posts.
This was great advice on using social media.
I had a hard time figuring it out at the beginning.
But I started conversations with fellow creators and I really had a lot of fun.
I don't make as much stats and experiments but I simply try to be a part of the webcomic community. Makes friends and see what's out there.
Hopefully people want to know more about myself and what I do in return!
Ummm, can I ask for help with Facebook? Everything I do is shown on the timeline, how can I disable it at once? (I don't get this at all, who wants to be notified that I changed my profile photo? :/ quickly regretting the decision to revive my FB page)
I think part of the reason why it seems so saturated is because we're dealing with a relatively niche market or niche marketing circle. I think we should try and expand our horizons in terms of where we advertise and promote our own content.
I see the terms "getting noticed" a lot and it seems to imply passivity. I feel like this sort of inspires the wrong kind of mentality at times? Like, if you make good work, then one day you'll get noticed is probably not the best approach to creating a social media presence. For the most part, I think we view social media in this way because a lot of the already established creators do this with their social media accounts, just posting good content and they get a lot of likes. But what's important to think about is that there was a lot of grunt work put into establishing that type of reach and behavior.
Yeah, I think image based posts work the best for social media in general. One of the places that I'm really interested in is Instagram. An entirely image based posting platform. I know you can have clickable links on your profile, but other than that, it's almost impossible to funnel people to your site - YET - a lot of people use it for social media. It's fascinating!
Creator networking is definitely helpful!
You can hide posts from your timeline by clicking on the top right hand corner of the post and accessing the drop down menu.
Knowing peak traffic times on certain social media sites helps too! I've been using this7 to track peak traffic times for Tumblr. I think it's helped, though I have no data to back it up. Might be time to start using bit.ly!
And Instagram was fairly easy to figure out. People (myself included) tend to check Instagram at work, so I try to post around lunchtime. Also, it's the only platform where it's acceptable to spam hashtags. So figure out what hashtags are popular and run with it!
And take advantage of trending hashtags and try to stay ahead of the curve. On National No Bra Day I posted an "awkward no-bra hug" animation on Instagram with the hashtag #nobraday and it performed really well compared to my other posts.
Part 2 of your post really resonated with me. I'm one of those people who is embarrassed/anxious abut showing off my comics to friends and family. So I started at like 2 followers on each of these platforms and built up from there. I could easily get my content exposed to 300+ people on Facebook, but I'm so caught up in "But what if [insert super religious family member here] sees my comic about [insert potentially offensive subject here]??" that I haven't started a fan page, and may never start one. :c I thought I was the only one with that problem.
For me personally link based with one image (preview or first panel of the comic) didn't really result in much shares. Images based posts did result in a lot of shares. That's why I'm bummed out about fb not allowing combo of regular images and GIF images in one post. Plus, fb isn't friendly with taps-style vertical posts so I often had to re-arrange my taps comics to make it more viewable on fb. 
oh well a bit of work is worth it- AND you can have it print-ready easily for printing comics into a book. I'm willing to do a bit extra work because most of my audience is on fb.
Yeah I tried that a few times and got the same result you did. I am finding out though, that sharing posts from your fanpage to other groups helps out a lot, especially if people in those groups share it afterward. Anytime I try it with an image based post it tends to wind up doing better than most of my old ones.
Love the tips in here, and love your honesty too. When I was promoting my first web series, I got a healthy response from requesting reviews from websites that specialized in that and made lots of friends in the process. Not sure if there are alot of web comic review sites out there, but it's always worth asking around!
Working hard and am trying to post something on facebook twice per week. Does not sound like much, but it's two posts more than before! I feel like I am in "Social Media Training".
@michaelson Just out of curiosity, do you post only comics strips or do you post other materials as well, such as memes, jokes, relevant articles, etc? One thing I learnt from my blogging friends is to make your facebook account as visible as possible to your followers to build your own community of fans. That means you have to post several times per day, with contents that are potentially shareable (viral). But since a comics fans community might be a little different from, let say craft blog community, they might not appreciate extra 'stuff' like everyday articles, etc.
We used to post a large variety of content earlier on. We posted art tutorials, videos, previews of upcoming comics, memes, and links to our (now defunct) blog.
We also used to post twice or three times a day, eventually we wained off of this because our average reach per post was not dramatically effected by this.
I would say that it makes more sense to post more frequently when you're trying build up your audience and slowly curb that down over time.
These Facebook pages that you speak of....
Is it better to set up a Facebook account using the name of your comic/strip and set up a page for that, use a personal account and create a separate page for ones comic or some other combination?
I never figured that one out.
@Peej Depends on how you want to present yourself to readers/fans. Do you want yourself to be known just for a particular work/project, or do you want to put your name forward as a brand name (i.e. author) where fans can find your other projects in the same place. The advantage of setting up an fb account for a particular project is you will not bombard readers with updates that they don't need, but you'll miss the opportunity to do cross-promotion. Another disadvantage is if you have too many FB accounts you might find it difficult to maintain all of them as you have to deal with many different audience groups. Hope that helps put things into perspective.
Ah, thanks, that helped a lot!
Is there also a way to prevent those "activity" posts from showing up on the page in the first place? Like... if I "liked" something to help a friend but it's not related to comics so I don't want people to know about it?
Can I have yet another stupid question? What exactly is Instagram? I thought it was only for people to share their mobile photos ran through that "old school" filter... Do people post comics there too? Does it work similarly to Twitter or Tumblr?