Maximizing Your Marketing Efforts on Facebook

Facebook has become a favorite destination for anyone wishing to market a product, service, organization or even themselves.  And why not?  It's very functional.  You can post photos, videos, links and customize your page with an assortment of applications, just for starters.  If you are conducting a campaign, you can send updates--even targeting those updates by age, gender or location, set up an events calendar or engage in discussions.  With an investment of time and creative energy, you can succeed in the all important areas of branding, customer engagement, new customer acquisition, reputation management and lead generation, the very things that make a marketing, advertising or public relations campaign successful.

Thanks to a study conducted by Buddy Media, Facebook's marketing firm, we are learning more about best practices for posting on Facebook's brand pages.  Yesterday, we looked at a finding from the study which showed why customized URLs are important for extending a user's length of engagement.  Another key finding is that we should KISS our posts.  Not literally of course, but keep it short and sweet.  According to the study, posts containing 80 characters or less on average, had a 27% higher rate of engagement than those with more than 80 characters, however, these accounted for only 19% of all posts.  This can be a real challenge because we have so much to say, and of course it's all so very interesting. Perhaps one solution might be to post more often, using shorter posts.  Think Twitter, or maybe that's think micro Twitter since you can post up to 140 characters there.

Other key findings from the study:

• Thursday and Friday are peak interaction days.  The rate of engagement jumped by 18%.  More people commented and "Liked" posts on these days. (Data from Facebook reveals that there are actually certain days when we are happier and Friday appears to be that day as activity on the site jumps by 10%.  Read more about the Gross National Happiness Index.)
• Monday through Wednesday, engagement rates dropped by 3.5%, and by 18% on Saturday.
• As for the time of day, the Buddy Media study reveals that 60% of posts are made between 10:00am and 4:00 pm.  However, engagement rates are 20% higher outside of traditional work hours. "By posting within business hours, brands miss the critical opportunity to get the visibility they need for maximum engagement," according to the report. "So schedule posts to appear early in the morning or late at night. Don't publish simply because you're in front of your computer," noted the report.

Other recommendations from the report include:

• Avoid the hard sell.  Use promotional keywords like "winner" and "events" rather than the more direct terms "contest" or "coupon.
• Keywords like "how," "who," "what" and "when" are useful for driving interaction -- but "why," is not. "'Why' has both the lowest 'Like' and comment rates and may be perceived as intrusive and/or challenging,"
• Be direct in asking users for "Likes" and comments.  Place questions at the end of a post (rather than the beginning or middle) to increase the chances of getting a response. Posts ending with a question have a 15% higher engagement rate.

The bottom line:  Facebook can be a great tool for business.  But don't just rely on the site's bells and whistles, use a strategic approach to your Facebook campaign to maximize your marketing efforts.