Ask not what social media can do for you but what you can do for social media Part 2 Facebook

In my last social media blog I covered the use of Twitter and the various free tools used to grow followers and increase brand awareness on this social platform.

This time I’m going to be covering Facebook not how to set up a fan page, but the tools I find are great for marketing, and some top tips used in my PR role to help achieve the best results for our clients.

Facebook is an easy to use, fast growing, and one of the most recognised brands on the planet, however recent studies show that users are simply not interacting as much as they used to the accounts are there but the interaction is not.

To understand how your business or brand is doing on Facebook the only tool I would use is http://simplymeasured.com/  a free analytical tool that gives you several free reports

A fan Page Report
This report measures how effectively your brand is engaging on Facebook and which posts and tactic are working.

A Facebook Competitive analysis report
This report measures how your brand/company stacks up to competitors and what are their brands doing that works.

A Facebook Insights Report
Want to know how your Fan Page perform across the board? Just use this report.

A Content Analysis
Which content types are top performers and drive the most engagement.

This will cover all the bases and essentials best of all it’s free, but as with all good PR and marketing content is king so to help you I listed some of my top tips.

Frequency
Brand pages that post less frequently receive significantly higher values for virality. Posting once every three days (max) yields better engagement rates.

Time
The optimum time for posting content is before noon and after work hours.

Day
 The highest values for virality are obtained on Sundays, meaning businesses should grasp the opportunity to reach their audience on weekends.

Length
Keep it short and sweet. Posts with more than three lines of text score lower in      engagement.

Pictures
Using pictures with a post is essential, raising the virality of content by 69%.

Galleries
According to research, photo galleries perform very well on Facebook, boosting      virality by 73%, yet brands rarely use them.

Surveys
Surveys boost engagement by an enormous 139%, yet brands hardly ever use them only 1.5% of all posts analysed were surveys.

Links
Don’t bother. Posts with links received 88% less virality than other types of      content, so only use them is absolutely necessary.

Language
Keeping language simple, concise and emotional helps to boost engagement with a    post by 92%, 56% and 64% respectively.

Brands
Retail brands post around one-third more frequently than consumer brands, yet      consumer brands’ virality scores are more than twice as high. Therefore, retail brands should post less frequently and focus on the quality of post they publish.

I hope enjoyed this blog and found it useful, if you have any questions or comments I look forward to hearing them.