With the new rules that Facebook is implementing with fan pages, my fellow dancers and I have had a hard time reaching those fans who like our pages much less those who have yet to discover our sparkly selves. The new rules have not only affected us but other small businesses that rely on Facebook for traffic as well.
In order to try to figure out how the new rules will work, without having to pay to promote or use ads on Facebook. I have designed a multi-part Facebook experiment to determine if there is a certain day, time, wording or type of post that can help reach, engagement, sharing etc. This blog post is the results of Part 1 of my experiment: Post only.
I started with posts that do not have any links, photos or videos associated with it. I varied the time of day between 12, 2 and 4pm EST, the day of the week and whether or not the post contained the word Facebook in it in some way. The times I chose according to what Facebook insights said were the times that most of my fans were engaging. I would have done more times but the posts would have become unwieldy even using a scheduling program to help me.
I kept track of the results of each post at 24, 48 and 72 hours using the insights tab on my fan page it lets me know reach, post clicks, likes comments and shares. I noted all of them down in an excel sheet. It took about 2 weeks to cover all of the combinations that I had decided to start with. I know, it’s a big excessive and scientific but as I tell my mentoring students anything that keeps you organized and helps you analyze, gives you the most bang for your work.
So, what are the results?
Time
Best: The best time overall was 12pm. Regardless of what day, the noon posts did the best in terms of reach. The best time that had reasonable reach but better likes and shares was 4pm.
Worst: The worst time of day was 2pm.
Day:
Best: The best day overall was Tuesday, followed closely by Thursday.
Worst: The worst day overall was a tie between Saturday, Sunday and Wednesday.
Facebook:
Using the word Facebook in the post helped if the time/day was already a bust but not if they were already getting high numbers.
Note: None of these posts reached 100 in any of the 3 insight readings and my fan page has over 500 fans.
I hope this post has helped you in your Facebook posting schedule or perhaps inspired you to do your own experiment. I don’t know if these results will vary for a page with less or more fans than I have.
Please make sure to stay tuned for the next set of results when I test posts with links. Feel free to add your own ideas and tips in the comments section below. By doing the research we can all help each other succeed!