How to Make Your Comments Look Good on Facebook

There are creative ways to make you comments look good on Facebook. It's a combination of simple style tips, with simple technical tricks.

1- Use space

Style tip:

Every designer will tell you that space is essential to make things look good. That's the same for well written comments.
Make short, concise, precise statements. Separate your arguments in paragraphs. Use one liners to give them more weight.

Structure will gives a lot of space to your writing.

Tech trick:

When composing a comment to a status update, pressing "Enter" or "Return" posts the comment right away instead of creating a carriage return.

To add more than one paragraph, you must use a two-stroke keyboard combination to create carriage returns: hold down the "Shift" key on your keyboard, press "Enter" twice and let go of the "Shift" key. It'll create a carriage return.

2- Photos, Videos and Website Previews

Style tip:

When you post a link in a comment, a preview of its content will be shown in-line after you have posted.

This is similar to when users post URLs into the Facebook publisher for sharing to the news feed. You can use this powerful technique to show photos, play videos, and display blurbs and images from websites.

Tech trick:

Unlike wall and news feed posts, the content preview won't appear until after the link is published. If you have several links in your comment, only the first one will be used.

If you don't like the preview, you are then given the option to remove it. But as a general rule, use links you know are going to display the right preview. Videos and Photo links are easy to check.

3- Tag friends or pages

Style tip:

Facebook very conveniently allows you to tag people or Fan pages in your comments just by typing their names.

This is a great way to get their attention as they'll be notified that you tagged them. It's also a great way to give visibility to a friend or a to a page as readers can browse directly from your comment.

Tech trick:

When you start typing someone or some page's name, Facebook will display a little window with suggestions of people or pages to tag. If it doesn't, start by typing a "@", then type the name of the person or page you want to tag.

Select that person or page in the suggestions window. It's full name should appear on the comment with a light blue background.

4- Keep it friendly

Style tip:

Tagging people is great, but If you want your comment to look friendlier (this is a social network after all) it'll be nicer to have their first names, and not their full names.

Tech trick:

Right after you've selected a person to tag, hit backspace once to remove the last name.

Make sure that the first name is still there and still have the light blue background.

That means you haven't removed the tag.

5- Stay nice

Style tip:

Offensive comments are cited by 55% of Facebook users as the major reason to make their friends list lighter.

Use humor with caution. It can be a double edged sword.

Make sure to follow the right etiquette: even if you disagree with someone, it's never appropriate to use insults or other offensive language.

Tech trick:

Once you've posted a comment, subscribers to the post will be notified and will see what you've written on their email or smartphones. If you realize that you overreacted or made a mistake, it'll be already too late to correct your comment.

So if you're going to write a long comment or go on a rant, make sure to start writing down your reply on a desktop app like notepad. Re-read what you've written twice, and then only post it.

Happy Facebooking!