Gallery Bookshop in Mendocino, CA, shared a pretty sweet “Overheard in the Bookshop” post on Facebook yesterday. (see above)

The thing that makes “overheards” work in social media is the anonymity factor. You’re not embarrassing anybody by announcing to the world who said what. Instead, you’re sharing something overheard that captured your attention and imagination, causing you to smile, smirk, or perhaps, slap your forehead. If it caused this reaction for you, it will more than likely elicit a similar response from your followers.

If the “overheard” isn’t timely, don’t feel like you have to make time to share it immediately. Instead, write it in that notebook of yours and share it later. Your followers care more about what was said than when.

If you have a successful post on social media, you might consider sharing it through your other means of customer communication. By doing so, it’s a good reminder that your store is on social media and this is the type of post customers are missing if they do not currently follow you.

Just as I was able to embed the code for the post on my site, you should be able to embed it on your site, and (probably) in your newsletter.

Here’s how to embed a Facebook post, explained in Beth jargon:

1. click on the downward-pointing carrot arrow thingy in the upper-right corner of the post
2. select “embed post”
3. copy the highlighted code using control + c (or ⌘ + c on a Mac)
4. paste the code in the html of your website or newsletter using control + v (or ⌘ + v on a Mac) – depending on your email program, you might have to click the button in your block that reads “html” or “<> source” or something similar

If you have difficulty embedding the code in your newsletter, you could just insert a screenshot of the post and attach a hyperlink to it, leading to the actual Facebook page.