By now you should know that media is moving away from print and billboards, and towards digital media. This means it is increasingly important to gain a presence within your community through social media (in this case, we will discuss your Facebook page). However, with Facebook being the largest social network worldwide—with close to two billion users — you may assume you have to post 10 to 15 times a day in order to get noticed. Well, you know what happens when you assume, right?
Sometimes you are incorrect
You should reserve that strategy for Twitter, where it is more acceptable to post a lot of little messages. We all know someone who posts 15 times a day on Facebook, and we also know how quickly that person gets blocked for spamming.
However, this still begs the question: How many times a day should I post on Facebook? A recent study showed that, while it differs from company to company depending on how good the content is and how big the audience is, the average life for a post for a company on Facebook is around three hours.
Now, this does not mean that you should post new content every three hours. Again, you will be spamming your customers, and they will likely block you. It does mean that you will need to do some research on your posts to see when they get the most interaction.
If you have customers on both sides of the Atlantic, then you may want to post at 9:00 a.m. GMT as well as 15:00 a.m. GMT so that a post is on top of their news feeds when they log in each day. If you are only local, then you may post at 9:00 a.m. and again at 6:00 p.m. so there is a post when your customers first log on, and then when they finish work.
But you don’t want to just be publishing posts for the sake of publishing posts. Make sure your content is interesting and engaging! No one likes to read something that is boring.
Also, remind your customers to continue to visit your Facebook page. This may seem a little desperate, but Facebook’s algorithm for determining what goes on your customers’ news feeds is helped by how often they visit a page, and how much they interact with its posts. How many times have you liked a page on Facebook, and then never seen any of their posts? It happens all the time, because Facebook wants to only provide content that will help users.
Marketing for your business has always been hard, but it is becoming more difficult because of the ever-changing digital landscape. You will never be able to master it, so do not be discouraged when a strategy doesn’t work at first. Keep testing different ways to reach your customers. When you find something that works, do not be afraid to tweak it to make it even better!
