How do you optimise for cut-through in Facebook marketing?

With more than 30 billion pieces of content shared on Facebook each month, have you ever wondered how to optimise engagement on your brand's Facebook Page and get more people to come back? When's the best time to post, how often and are there variances by industry?

I am currently working on a social media campaign for a client that will use Buddy Media to manage a Facebook page as a part of the project, having taken a look into Buddy Media (my first experience of using it) I came across this interesting white paper and thought that it was worth sharing and summarising for you.

Caveat first:  The data Buddy media used is across 200 large brands, this data will change (effectiveness will alter if everyone does the same thing!) and it won't be the same for all sizes of businesses and Facebook Page fan-bases. These reports are valuable for one reason - it's gets us thinking and asking the right questions - just keep it simple and relevant to your fans needs.

Our summary of the 6 take-aways from the report - Buddy Media used the number of comments as a % of fan base and number of Likes as a % of fan base as the KPI's to do their report.

1. Keep post length short and sweet - 80 characters or less of a 27% higher engagement rate. It's as simple as that.
2. Engagement rates are 3 times higher for posts that use a full length URL - instead of a URL shortener. Hmmm, that's a challenge for 80 characters or less! So, Buddy Media suggest it's the ambiguity of URL shorteners and the answer could be a vanity (or branded) URL shortener - nice idea.
3. Post updates when your fans are listening - brands posting outside of business hours had 20% higher engagement rates. Why? You want to be at the top of the news feed when people login.
4. All days are not equal in the land of Facebook - consider pre-scheduling posts for when people are not at work, they're more likely on Facebook - engagement rates on Thursday and Friday are 18% higher than other days of the week - check out the variances by industry though!
5. Fans follow instruction well - the simpler the better for our modern, attention-short mindset. Ask and ye shall (more likely) receive! When running promotional contests or campaigns it's softer words that resonate, something that excites.
6. Ask your fans questions at the end of posts - don't ask why - I mean literally, don't ask "Why…" - the best and least used words are "Where", "When" and "Would".

Also - this logic should have some relevance to Twitter, too!

[We have a related post giving ideas on the best ways to engage through Facebook updates - see  How email marketers can learn from the words Facebook users like.]