Buddy media found that Facebook’s new timeline this year caused a shift in design and marketing strategy for brands on Facebook.
Over 18,000 Facebook brand pages were analysed for two months after brands made the switch to the timeline.
The analysis reveals more than 75% of all posts by brands have more than 80 characters which Buddy Media says negatively effects interaction. In order to catch consumer attention easily brands are advised to keep posts short.
"It’s all about brevity on Facebook," said Buddy Media. Posts with 80 characters or less receive 23% higher interaction than longer posts."
Photos were found to be the best type of content to post, if brands want the most interaction after the switch to the timeline.
Photo posts were reported to have a 39% above average interaction rate from consumers. Text-only content like status updates were found to only receive 12% higher than the average.
Brands that posts links or videos were found to get fewer likes, comments and even shares than the average post.
The data also found that actually telling fans how they should interact will help drive interaction. Fans that were asked to like a post were 3X more likely to do so and fans asked to like a comment were 3.3x more likely to comment than if not asked.
Here are 5 extra tips from Buddy Media to get the most out of your Facebook wall posts:
- Use calls to action to explicitly tell fans what action you want them to take
- Use questions to drive dialogue in the form of comments
- Use emoticons as a layer of non-verbal communication
- Post on days that are best for your industry, schedule posts to take advantage of times when other brands are posting less, such as weekends
- Post on or two times per day but pace posts out to avoid exceeding seven posts per week
