Engagement is commonly perceived as being a valuable goal when implementing a Facebook marketing strategy.
Yet the word “engage” is tossed around like confetti at a mad monks wedding during social media discussions with the assumption that everyone is on the same page.
This scant disregard to what it actually means quite often ends up with clients and the marketers having totally different ideas on what goals will be achieved and tactics implemented.
The challenge for marketers is that with over 30 billion pieces of content being shared on Facebook a month, how do you improve and optimize your engagement with your Facebook fans and visitors so that you can deepen the engagement over time.
So What is Engagement?
Engagement is any interaction with a visitor to your Facebook site and can be a very simple ‘weak tie’ engagement such as a ‘like’ through to a full blown online conversation that results in emails with the ultimate engagement is face to face and beyond…but we won’t go there!
Examples of engagement
- Visitor ‘liking’ the page
- Leaving a comment
- Posting a link
- Uploading an image
- ‘Liking’ a link
When Should you Post?
Some other questions that I have been asked regularly are “When should I post?” and “How often should I post?”
A recent study from Buddy Media which covered a sample size of more than 200 clients analyzed “Likes” and comments made to these posts were also analyzed which provides some answers to those questions.
The sample size represented the world’s largest brands in a wide range of industries including entertainment, media, retail, automotive, business and finance, fashion, food and beverage, healthcare and beauty and travel and hospitality industries.
They looked at three primary success metrics in relation to Wall Posts:
3 Primary Success Metrics for Wall Posts
So what are some primary success metrics you should be measuring?
- Comment Rate – number of comments as a percentage of fan base
- ‘Like’ Rate – number of ‘likes’ as a percentage of fan base engagement rate
- Engagement Rate – a combination of the above factoring in fan base size
If you aren’t already these 3 key metrics should start to be built in to your reports.
Key Takeaways from the Research
1. Post Timing (Hour)
Brands that posted outside of normal business hours had 20% higher engagement rates on their posts.
2. “Promotional” Keywords
Which keywords are most engaging when running a contest, sweepstakes or other offer? The results are rather enlightening
Some of the key words that were most engaging were: Event, Winner, Offer, Win, Brand New and Entry. So these are the words you should consider when writing your Facebook ‘copy’
3. Post Length
Posts between one and 80 characters had, on average, a 27% higher engagement rate than posts with over 80 characters, yet accounted for only 19% of all posts. This finding shows that you need to take a closer look at the post length when uploading content to your Facebook page. It needs to be kept in mind we live in an age of the “Attention Economy” and skimming.
4. URL Shorteners
Engagement rates are 300% higher for posts that used a full-length URL, as opposed to a URL shortener. For me this maybe suggests that the transparency of what the link actually is makes it easier for people a to trust and then click on the link.
5. Keywords
The study showed that keeping it simple was key.
Top 5 Key words that generated the most ‘Likes’
- Like
- Take
- Submit
- Watch
- Post
Top 5 Keywords that generated the most comments
- Post
- Comment
- Tell Us
- Check
- Like
So from the time of your post to the keywords you use when designing and updating your Facebook page they can all make a difference to the optimizing of your marketing results. A 20% improvement here with a 10% increase to another element can make a big difference to a marketing campaign result over time.
I look forward to hearing your stories about Facebook engagement on your site.
If you want to read the full report you can download it here.
More Reading
- 50 Fascinating Facebook Facts And Figures
- 10 Best Facebook Campaigns
- 10 Best Social Media Campaigns
- The Worlds 20 most Popular Facebook Pages
- The Worlds 10 Most Popular Company Facebook Pages
Image by Martin Neuhof | martin-neuhof.com