With the number of Facebook users continuing to grow, businesses are having a hard time justifying staying away from the social network. Recently, AT&T released the results of its
Small Business Technology Poll
. In the survey, AT&T found that 41% of small businesses surveyed have a Facebook page for their business. Last year, only 27% said they were using the social networks, which is a 52% jump in usage.
Although the amount of usage is growing quickly, it is still taking some businesses quite some time to get their "Facebook legs." A lot of businesses are using Facebook as a broadcast mechanism instead of a tool to engage with their fans. For those who are attempting to engage, standing out amongst the sea of other Fan pages out their can be difficult and frustrating, especially with a limited budget.
In Dan Zarrella's recent
Science of Timing
, he talks about the concept of contra-competitive timing. This is the idea that you should time your actions, whether it be sending email, tweeting, posting to Facebook or blogging, so that they take place when your competitors are not. As we can see from the eMarketer statistics below, this effect seems to be present on Facebook as well. eMarketer found a 20.0% increase in engagement for posts made outside business hours, so I would encourage businesses to attempt to post during off-hours if they are trying to stimulate engagement with their fans. Below, I've included a few more tips for how you can encourage engagement with your fans.
Keep Posts Short
There was a 27.0% increase in engagement for posts 80 characters long or shorter. Time is a person's most precious resource. Respect that and you will be rewarded with a higher potential of having fans read and possibly even respond to your posts.
Ask Questions
It might seem obvious, but people are more likely to engage if you ask them something. It has long been discussed that people don't want to hear about you they want to hear about what problem you solve or what solution you offer. Asking questions not only increases engagement, but it allows you to see into the mind of your fans and understand what really matters to them.
Post Towards the End of the Week
When everyone else's business is winding down for the weekend you should be ramping up your efforts. With less noise to compete with and your fans possibly winding down as well, this is the perfect time to try to break through the clutter and engage with them.
One statistic that I found interesting was that there was an 18.0% decrease in engagement for posts on Saturday. My thoughts are that a lot of people take Saturday as their day off from technology, and this results in the lack of engagement. What do you guys think?
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Paul L'Acosta 11:50 PM on April 12, 2011
I do agree with you and Dan that timing is of the essence as I've seen dramatic swings in the engagement on our clients' accounts. Somehow this topic takes me back to the "When is the best time to post on eBay". Ahh, the simpler times gone by. See you soon! ~Paul
variable data printing 1:54 AM on April 13, 2011
In my experience, using Facebook to advertise my business has been confusing and intimidating. I am currently struggling to figure out how to do SEO for my direct mail and variable data printing business. And as tough as it has been, I have still been able to figure it out easier than I have how to use Facebook to advertise.
Best Car Wax 2:48 AM on April 13, 2011
VDP - I can sse that you are making strides with your SEO and getting your link text in relevant places but I believe one of the key issues with FB and what this article is encouraging is not to be looking to "Advertise" to your audience but rather "Engage" with them and let them make the choice and first move to want to interact more with you rather than them feeling you are pushing your message on them through FB. Does anyone else agree?
Joe 8:09 AM on April 13, 2011
At one point Dan was quoted as saying that Saturday is the best day to post on FB
Shovan Sargunam 8:32 AM on April 13, 2011
Amazing article. Thanks for sharing.
How can we separate what content is visible to fans and non fans? It was easy to do via FBML
any ideas?
Janet Aronica 8:40 AM on April 13, 2011
OK I *love love love* you guys but I do question the timing in FB posts a little... because here's my thing: even if you do post at a particular time or day on the FB page, won't the page's fans still only really see it if it makes it into the newsfeed? To me it matters more when it shows up in the newsfeed because the way FB is set up the pages you like are otherwise somewhat hidden from you. So you're going to have to get more engagement from people in their network (liking/commenting etc) on the page in order for that to happen regardless of the exact hour of day. I see the timing stuff making a bigger difference for things like email and Tweets (which to me seem more real-time in nature than FB pages) but for pages I feel like content (like you guys mentioned regarding asking questions etc) is the best place to focus. I liked these FB page content tips from Social Fresh a while back: http://bit.ly/gGjyIw
Brooklyn Cole 9:47 AM on April 13, 2011
I have also noticed that engagement decreases on Saturday for business/brand pages. However, personal FB posts are still likely to receive responses. So, I don't think people are taking a break from technology; I think they are taking a break from thinking too much.
Ken Lauher 11:04 AM on April 13, 2011
I personally have made a decision to post a blog article on Saturdays as it draws in a different crowd, more interaction and increases my traffic to just below the weekday average.
Hartley Brody 11:22 AM on April 13, 2011
@Shovan By default, all of the content that you post on your page's wall is available to everyone. If you want to make content only available to fans, that's called "gated" content. There are ways to do that yourself, if you know PHP. Or there are Facebook applications you can install that will do it for you.
Jay Walsh 1:01 PM on April 13, 2011
On some points: keep it short, ask questions and Saturdays are dead, I'm in agreement with.
But I've actually had more engagement with folks early in the morning, later in the afternoon and late in the evening. Monday mornings, Wed and Thurs always seem a little bit busier to me.
A little off topic, but what I've always found funny were posts that look at specific times of day to post to Twitter and FB. But they never tell you WHOSE 9am are they referring to: West coast, East coast... Based on that analogy it's pretty safe to post at any old time of day because you'll be hitting someone's sweet spot.
posicionamiento 1:28 PM on April 13, 2011
Very very nice article indeed. :)
http://www.promowebperu.com
Kirill Kononov 2:43 PM on April 13, 2011
Weekend newsletters do indeed bring more traffic and response, social media interaction as well. Actually, thx to Hubspot and their research "numbers of opt-ins and opt-outs throughout the week"
Allan J Bornstine 3:01 PM on April 13, 2011
This posting was a great piece of information. However I would add that not all markets are the same. We have found in our little corner of the Country some different stats on web traffic and fan engagement especially on our facebook business pages. We use the "Insights" available through our facebook adds to track usage in our local area. We found that most of our traffic is between friday nights and late Sunday. Seems that in our area people are just not into long hours of the Internet even for business during the work week. So do to our findings most of our adds are posted to target the greater majority of users on the weekends. Each demographic is different and it is up to the business owner to really do some research for their area so they can better target their fans and potential customers. As we are a huge supporter of local small business these are the tactics we teach our customers so they can make the most out of Social Media and all it has to offer. I wish everyone Good Luck with their research.
Fiona Blake 1:15 PM on April 14, 2011
QUOTE: Jay Walsh
"
A little off topic, but what I've always found funny were posts that look at specific times of day to post to Twitter and FB. But they never tell you WHOSE 9am are they referring to: West coast, East coast... Based on that analogy it's pretty safe to post at any old time of day because you'll be hitting someone's sweet spot"
Couldn't agree more!!
Ashley 6:51 PM on April 15, 2011
I've read from multiple sources that weekends are the worst time to post to FB or Twitter. A few sources I have found say that Tuesday is the best day to post, with Wednesday falling closely behind.
http://onehalfamazing.com/social-media/the-best-time-to-post-to-your-facebook-fan-page/