Facebook Says You’re Posting the Wrong Stuff

According to Facebook, many brands across the site are posting “incorrectly.” Let’s take a look at what content works and what helps convert views into “likes.”

Ad Age reports that Facebook has recently undergone a study of 23 brands and over 1,000 of their posts. In short, Facebook
concluded that many of the brands were simply posting incorrectly. And, apparently, “relevancy” played a huge role in fan engagement and the earning of likes. So, what are brands doing to “get it right?”

“By far, the biggest predictor of engagement was that the post was on a topic relevant to the brand,” said Sean Bruich, head of measurement platforms and standards at Facebook. “It impacts everything, from lightweight likes to more invested shares. It’s actually one of the most important things a brand can do. People are seeing the content because they liked the brand, and it makes sense that content about the brand will get them engaged.”

Keeping Bruich’s advice in mind, brands would be wise to keep their posts focused on brand-centric topics, and ditch the one-off status updates about holidays or weekend events. I recently pondered the same thing, asking whether it was wise or not to post about topics that everyone else was. Facebook’s advice? Post about things that are relevant to YOUR brand, not others.

In some cases, brands are making their own “posting rules,” using totally unique and outlandish marketing language to create “relevant posts” that would otherwise seem completely unrelated to the brand. Ad Age called out Skittles as a prime example of this self-made relevancy. It takes guts to make a strategy like this work, but some brands have found success in an outlandish, off-topic posting strategy. The Old Spice account is one of my personal favorites in this regard.

As we’ll discuss later, different types of post engagement yield different “values” for your brand’s page. At the top of the list is a share, representing the most exposure and engagement a single post can achieve. Ad Age reports that, “To get more precious shares, Mr. Bruich [of Facebook] advises posting more photos and videos. Asking questions of your fans increases commenting, but not liking and sharing.”

If you think about it, even a non-retail company can take advantage of the sharing power of photos. By creating unique pictures, graphics, or sharing relevant information in a photo post, you increase the chance that a fan will hit “share” instead of just liking the post. Keep the photos on-topic for your brand and there’s an even greater chance your fans will engaged with them!

Are you using photos as part of your posting strategy? What has worked well for your brand in the past?

Bio
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Chris Richards

Chris Richards is the Digital Marketing Strategist for Fanpage Toolkit and writes many of the blog posts featured here. You can follow him on Twitter at @seerichards where he Tweets about tech, marketing, and anything else related to start-ups.

Latest posts by Chris Richards (see all)

Facebook Responds to Outcry with “Pages” Dedicated Feed - November 1, 2012
Control Which Fans See Facebook Page Status Updates - October 30, 2012
Facebook for Nonprofits: Making the Most of Your Time - October 13, 2012

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