You want to make you social media marketing messages you post on facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn as attractive as possible. That means that you should include a photograph or graphic with each update. The bigger they are the easier it is to grab someone's attention. A common mistake that marketer's and small business owners commit is allow the software to convert any page link you have in your message to automatically produce a small thumbnail photograph and a snapshot of some of the text on the target web page.

To stop this happening there is a simple procedure to follow. TEXT - IMAGE - LINK. Write or paste your text in first. Then upload the image you want to use from your computer. Then add the link to the page on your website. If you do this process in any other order that annoying photo thumbnail appears and you have to delete it.

Another tip is to place your page links after the second sentence rather than at the bottom. All the social media company's software shorten articles so you only see the first paragraph and add a clickable link "read more..." or "See more" at the end to open the page up so you can see the whole article. By having the link near the top of the article it can be seen by people just skimming the newsfeed. If your photograph or headline catches their eye there is a good chance they will click your link to go to your website.

Look at the above two examples of posts on my fly fishing shop facebook pages. You will notice that the photographs are huge and attention grabbing plus the links to the product page are visible. I have put a red line around both links. You can see the words "See more" at the end of the truncated paragraph. When that is clicked by the reader the page expands to reveal the full article. If I had placed the link at the bottom of the article or any further down it would not bee seen by those readers skimming through the recent posts on his phone or tablet to find something interesting to read. Also note that at no time in these posts am I trying to overtly sell anything. There are no prices visible. I talk about the product. It's history and how to use it effectively. This will hopefully excite interest in the fishing fly and lead to the reader clicking the link to make a purchase.