When it comes to your social media strategy, knowing when and what to post in order to best reach your customers is crucial, maximizing user engagement from every status update, video or image post on networks such as Facebook is becoming more and more challenging. As a brand manager, social media agency or small business, we all spend a lot of time crafting our Facebook messaging to ensure we get the maximum response from every post that makes an appearance on our Facebook news feed. We need to be certain that we are not only posting the right content but we are also posting it at the right time. Facebook engagement levels vary throughout the day and knowing precisely when to post that well-crafted Facebook update can make the difference between a 15% interaction rate and a 1% interaction rate.

Thankfully, the team at Buddy Media has compiled a report analyzing Facebook page data from the world’s largest brands detailing just that. This report reveals the following;

• The best days to post to Facebook by industry.
• How to get more likes, comments and shares.
• Which words to use to increase Facebook engagement.

Below we will look at some of the highlights of this report as well as the key things to consider when posting to Facebook for your industry.

The data of over 1,800 Facebook pages revealed 79% of all interactions on Facebook come from Likes alone, with comments following at 15% and shares at 6%. The Interaction rate is measured by adding likes + comments + shares divided by the number of impressions per post, however, these numbers exclude all paid impressions.

The following industry categories were examined to determine when the best day to post to Facebook was for each vertical in order to receive the maximum interaction rate. We have combined all the industries covered in this report into the one graph, demonstrating the percentage of Facebook posts on any given day compared to the rate of interaction on that day.

From the graph we can deduce the following

• The best day to post to Facebook for Advertising and consulting is a Saturday/Sunday
• The best day to post to Facebook for Automotive is a Saturday/Sunday
• The best day to post to Facebook for Clothing and Fashion is a Thursday
• The best day to post to Facebook for Consumer Packaged Goods is Saturday/Sunday and Wednesday
• The best day to post to Facebook for Finance is a Sunday
• The best day to post to Facebook for Food and Beverage is a Saturday/Sunday
• The best day to post to Facebook for Retail is a Monday
• The best day to post to Facebook for Health and Beauty is a Monday
• The best day to post to Facebook for Nonprofit is a Sunday
• The best day to post to Facebook for Publishing is a Sunday and Wednesday
• The best day to post to Facebook for Sports is a Sunday
• The best day to post to Facebook for Technology is a Monday
• The best day to post to Facebook for Telecommunications is a Monday and Friday
• The best day to post to Facebook for Travel is a Monday

What time of day is best to post to Facebook?

Before Facebook introduced Timeline for Facebook pages, peak interaction time was reported as being during business hours, which suited brands fine. As Facebook insights began to provide more metrics we are now seeing an interaction surge during non-business hours. Between the hours of 8pm and 7 am we are seeing an increase of 14% in interaction levels. Despite this, only 18% of posts are currently sent during these times.

How often should you post to Facebook?

The report also revealed that brands received an increase in interaction rates of 19% by posting only one to two times per week compared to those posting more than 3 times per week. Fans tend to pay less and less attention to brands that continue to clog up their news feed, and this can increase the likely hood of an unsubscribe as well as your posts being penalized by the Facebook EdgeRank algorithm.

What are the most effective calls to action?

Which keywords in your posts are the most effective at boosting user interaction levels? Words such as ‘like’, ‘caption this’ and ‘share’ are at the top of the list when it comes to most effective calls to action. These top options can increase interaction levels by as much as 48%. Check out the tag cloud below to see how some of the more popular choices compare.

Facebook continues to evolve at a rapid rate so be sure to continue to measure, learn and refine your posting strategy to best match your industry and your customers. Remember to;

• Post at a time and day that suits your industry.
• Post quality not quantity, one to two times a week is best.
• Use strong call to action keywords that encourage engagement.

Check out Buddy Media to download the full report