How and When Your Business Should Post to Facebook

Everyone knows that Facebook marketing is important and as the largest social media platform, Facebook isn’t going anywhere. But with the advertising opportunities abound, still, most businesses do not understand how to effectively incorporate Facebook into their organic marketing strategy.

The objective of quantifying the impact of social media can be elusive, however, with Facebook analytics there are clear ways to identify what works and what doesn’t. Use these suggestions when planning your Facebook marketing and follow up with a review of your analytics to identify what works best for your business.

How to Post on Facebook

The way that you post will influence how many people view your post, share it, like it or take another action. You can spend the same amount of time posting as you do now, while improving your results, by making these simple changes.

• Post a link. Instead of posting a picture with a link in it, copy and paste the link into your status update. The photo will populate and statistics show that the click-through ratio increases when doing it this way. Simultaneously, Facebook doesn’t like URLs to be listed on an image and is less likely to display your post in as many newsfeeds when done this way.

Facebook marketing, like Google marketing, depends on providing the user with a positive experience. Letting the image and text populate, gives the user an idea of what they are going to see, thereby increasing the likelihood that they will stay on the page longer after clicking through. If you are posting your own blog post, this can be good for your organic marketing.

• Use targeting. Facebook marketing is great for being able to target specific demographics. For example, if you are promoting a post you can have it shown to people in the area that like a particular sports team, etc.

Also, Facebook has now introduced an additional feature for your normal posts. You can now target interests, for example – friendship, so that the post is displayed only to certain fans in hopes of increasing engagement. Simultaneously, if you are posting about something that is time specific you can now select an end date for your posts so that when it is over, the post will disappear from your news feed.

• Call-to-Action. Whenever possible, include a call-to-action in all of your organic marketing activities. The goal is to inspire the reader to take the next step whether that is signing up for something, scheduling an appointment, joining a newsletter list, etc. Be sure to include a CTA in your Facebook marketing posts so that you can drive engagement and create customer acquisition opportunities.

When to Post on Facebook

You can post on Facebook every day but if you are posting at a time when your customers aren’t online, your engagement will be low. Facebook Insights provides you with an opportunity to know when your fans use Facebook and time your posts accordingly. Check your insights on a weekly basis and schedule your posts to go out at peak times. You can even view day specific information. If it gives you a time, say 2:00, we suggest posting thirty minute before so that it shows up in their newsfeed when they are ready to look at it.

Simultaneously, use your instincts to determine if something is hot and everyone is online talking about it – if so be sure to post.