Denver Social Media: New Rules for Facebook Marketing, Part 4

Mike Hanbery - 4.4.2011 9:00 AM

How often should I post?

Not all social networks are the same. When I speak to groups, I talk about this in the context of "culture." In this post, we'll focus on the practical, matter-of-fact stuff, but it still makes sense to address, briefly, the nature of how people use the network.

Constants in the Equation

Very few of us interact on Facebook with a primary goal of selling something, and those who project that are broadcasting to an empty channel. We use Facebook for entertainment and keeping in touch, and we make time for this on weekends. We've seen recent data that says messages on Facebook are most likely to be consumed on Saturdays and Sundays and Tuesday through Friday before the work day starts, but we haven't seen that data broken out to the granular degree we would like and we suspect that Facebook is consumed with less discipline and efficiency than, say, email is today.

Frequency

Webolutions' clients, for whom the audience is consumers, start on a schedule of Saturday morning, Tuesday evening and Thursday evening. As the brand grows more social, the results from A/B testing are collected and interpreted and the audience preferences become more clearly identified over time, the schedule adjusts. The next test we run is to change from Tuesday and Thursday evenings to mornings before work on those days, and A/B testing continues from there until we find the sweet spot.

Dependability

Your audience should get what they expect, when they expect it. I'm a Simpsons geek. Every Sunday, 7:00 pm, this cartoon comes on. Bart is going to say something irreverent, Homer will do something stupid and the rest of the characters will enable by way of filling in the slow spots. If the show hits the air at 7:04 some Saturdays or 6:53 some Thursdays and every once in a while throws in a live action cameo from Eleanor Clift recounting her experiences as a McLaughlin Group panelist...well, I'll have better places to be. A schedule, an Editorial Calendar, provides structure to your internal processes and frames the expectations for your audience.

Sanity

It bears mentioning that tools exist to help you schedule your output and manage your time. For scheduling output ahead of time and monitoring multiple social media channels in real time, my favorite is HootSuite.

Summary

There's no easy answer, but start with every other day, outside of work hours. Use what you know about your customer and their tendencies to implement the next step. Collect and analyze data, and do it again. And again.

The Business Opportunity

We've suggested where to start. Your challenge will be to find the point at which the timing and frequency of your output appeals to the audience. When your most engaged members become your brand evangelists by sharing your content, smile. You can't stop analyzing and improving, but you can enjoy a small victory.

Next: From when to what. What type of content is most and least likely to be consumed and shared.

Previous Articles in this Series

• New Rules for Facebook Marketing, Part 1: Two Rules that Haven't Changed
• New Rules for Facebook Marketing, Part 2: Three Reasons You Love the New Facebook Page Functionality
• New Rules for Facebook Marketing, Part 3: How Facebook Decides What Posts Get Seen in Your News Feed

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