Being in charge of your small or large business’s Social Media Marketing can be quite the endeavor. There are countless factors that go into scheduling *content calendars, like what content is suitable for which social network, how often should you spend monitoring your social networks, etc. But, the #1 question we get asked at Wizler, is when should you be posting on Facebook to create the most engagement!?
It used to be a bit of a mystery how certain pages ended up on your News Feed more than others, and how long each post stayed active in one’s Newsfeed, but with the development of EdgeRank, digital marketers are now able to analyze and understand a post’s life like never before.
What is EdgeRank? 2013 Guide to Facebook’s EdgeRank
To understand the life of each post on Facebook, you must first understand EdgeRank. EdgeRank is the algorithm that Facebook uses to determine what stays active on your Facebook newsfeed. At it’s essence, EdgeRank is designed to be centered around providing value to customers. It ideally states that the more interesting the material you market is, the more engagement it will receive, and the more the activity will stay alive.
To marketers, EdgeRank dramatically changed how people were using social media marketing on Facebook, because it meant that not all of your fans on the pages you run were seeing all of your content. Prior to EdgeRank, whether or not your audience saw your posts was determined by their Facebook activity, and by how many other friends they had to clutter their newsfeed. With EdgeRank, only 10% -17% of your fan base can see any given status update from pages you run, thus making many key factors play into scheduling your posts.
How do we know if a post is “alive”?
A post that is alive on Facebook simply means that it is occupying the News Feed. This means it is either a “Highlighted Story” at the top of the feed, or is merely staying put on Newsfeeds for fans of the page. The most important thing to remember while having a live post, is to not post again while the post is active. Attempting to have multiple, alive posts basically leads to Facebook cannibalism – as the posts will eat each other leading to a decrease in EdgeRank.
A Post is considered dead when the growth in engagement is less than 10% of the largest growth the post once had. Understanding when a post stops receiving engagement and “dies,” is important because it allows you to plan when to post next.
What is the Average Life of a Post?
The median Post Lifetime is between 2 hours and 56 minutes to 3 hrs and 7 minutes, so most Pages are experiencing Post Lifetimes around 3 hours. This data was sampled across 500+ Pages and over 30,000 individual Posts, with the average Page size being approximately 140,000. There didn’t seem to be any correlations between Page Size and Post Lifetime.
What does the Post Lifetime mean?
If a post on Facebook has a lifetime of 3 hours, and your audience is using Facebook 16 hours each day, you should be prepared to deliver 5-6 posts every day. Not counting the repetition of posts, that translates into 35 – 40 posts every week and more than 150 posts a month! While that is a lot of content to schedule, it also gives you the greatest chance of having potential customers engaging on your page, resulting in increased profit. With Social Media Advertising being significantly cheaper than traditional marketing, having a dedicated employee to focus on Social Media is probably the most effective way to channel your companies energy and time. Wizler offers full time social media consultants that handle every aspect of social media marketing – from creating content, scheduling, and monitoring, for as low as $299 a month!
How do I use Post Lifetime to Benefit my social media strategy?
The goal with EdgeRank is to post roughly every 3 hours and to create content that encourages engagement. Posts that linger longer in the News Feed have more opportunities for Engagement; if a Post continues to receive Engagement, it will continue to thrive, therefore extending the Lifetime. The best indicator of your posts liveliness is shares and comments. Studies show that comments are 4 times more valuable than likes, and shares give your post extra life because they are now active in someone elses’ feed, and thus are likely to be seen by a whole new audience. A post may be on it’s way to dying, but a Share populates it into new News Feeds which gives it more opportunity for Engagement. Building content to be Shared can increase your average Post Lifetime.
Understanding EdgeRank seems daunting, but can be easily tackled if you understand and apply a few basic principles. Through these, you are certain to see an increase in engagement on your social pages.
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