Think You Are Handling Your Social Media Page Right? Think Again.

What the public knows is that we can use the number of “likes” we have to measure the popularity of our Facebook page. The truth is that there are things beyond that to determine the popularity of a page or the success of a certain campaign. In reality, there are many services that sell ‘fake fans’. ‘Fake fans’, inthis case, refers to those Facebook members that may live anywhere in the world and may not even able to read the language of your page, which make a poor and weak foundation for engagement. The real test is how many people actually see your post and how many of them are actually engaged in the activities. There are four categories:

• Reach – the number of people that actually see your post
• Engaged Users – the number of people clicking anywhere on your post
• Talking About This – the number of people sharing, liking, or commenting on your post
• Virality – the number of people who have created a story from your post as a percentage of the number of people who have seen it

Did you know that only 16% of your Facebook page fans will actually see your post? Yes, it’s pretty surprising. Facebook uses a complex combination of algorithms called “Edgerank” to determine who sees your posts. These are based on three factors – Affinity, Weight and Time Decay. Affinity measures the relationship between the fans and the post, for example, the more engaged a fan is with your page the more likely they will see it again in the future. Weight suggests that different types of posts carry different weights, for example, a set of photos will look more interesting than a post of plain text. Obviously, the higher the weight, the higher the score. Time Decay is when your post ages, then automatically it loses it value. To maximize your Edgerank, your Facebook posts should be Visual, Engaging, Brief and Relevant.

1. PICTURES! Pictures are VERY IMPORTANT to attract people to view your page. Snaps of food, visuals of places, photos of people dining will captivate the eyes of your fans. Photo albums are 180 times more likely to illicit engagement from fans, with photos and videos right behind at 120 and 100 times more respectively.

1. Interactive – It’s better to have your captions as questions, to evoke people’s engagement. Try asking about a wine pairing option, a favorite dish, or a suggestion for a new feature or menu item. Adding a simple call to action increases the chances of a response by ninety times.
2. Succinct – Posts between 100 and 250 characters are 60% more likely to get “liked” or commented on – keep things BRIEF and SHORT, but CLEAR!
3. Relevancy – Effective Facebook posts can and should include information that is of interest to your customers. For instance – if you’re an Italian restaurant you could include a link to an interesting article about Sicilian wines. It doesn’t all have to be a sales pitch to be effective.

Studies show that the most effective time during the day to post is after 4 PM, and the peak is between 7 PM to 11 PM. During the day, people are usually intensely working, and the posts published during those times are usually buried at the bottom. Posting only one post each day is good enough. The reason why people unfollow a certain page is usually that it posts too much posts in a day, or even worse, several posts in a row. You know that 95% of your fans usually sees your updates on their News Feed, not directly on your page. Posting too much does not only make your posts less valuable, but it also encourages your fans to click the Hide button. You can get feedback, reward participation and notify customers of new offerings. Facebook provides something that is very innovative and helpful, so it would be better for us not to misuse this cutting-edge marketing tool. We have to keep our fans engaged and interested with everything on our page to make them coming back for more all the time.

The post Think You Are Handling Your Social Media Page Right? Think Again. appeared first on Qraved Journal.