Last week Vitrue came out with a Social Page Evaluator tool that is suppose to give a value in dollars to a Facebook Fan Page. This estimate is based on their now infamous $3.60 valuation for a Facebook Fan that was backed into using a lot of assumptions and a $5 CPM. I will save my gripes about the Fan evaluation for another day.
A key part of the Social Page Evaluator is post frequency. An easy way to drive the value of your Fan Page higher is to post more frequent updates that in turn lead to more impressions. Now to be fair, Vitrue does have a disclaimer that says “Be aware of what content you would like users to see from your brand and how frequently you are posting.” For that I applaud them because I completely agree, however, in their best practices list they say brands should aim to post 2-3 times a day. Let’s take a closer look at this 2-3 number because I have seen it mentioned on several other social media best practices lists around the web.
Certain types of brand verticals are ideal for posting 2-3 Facebook Page updates a day such as news sources, industry blogs, health brands, TV channels, private sale sites or large retail chains that sell thousands of different items. I wouldn’t mind seeing several daily posts from these types of Pages if they provided me with valuable information and were spread out in a timely fashion.
However, brands that fall into categories such as consumer packaged goods, restaurants, niche retailers, seasonal products, movies, and several others do not need to update me more than once daily (if that) with a post to the already crowded News Feed. Users don’t need 2-3 updates daily about how great a certain men’s razor is or daily reminders that a new hamburger is available at a national fast food chain.
A study last year by Sysomos found that on average Facebook Page administrators create one wall post every 15.7 days and among pages with more than one million fans, one wall post is created for every 16.1 days. This suggests there is no correlation with frequency of posts and popularity.
When deciding how often to post for your brand’s Page, take into consideration what type of product or service you provide and how much a user actually wants to hear about it or related information in their daily life. If what you provide affects users on a daily basis, like health food products for example, then maybe it is ok to post several health facts a day along with a product promotion a few times a week. As always, test what frequency is right for your audience and closely monitor how many people are unsubscribing to your updates via their News Feed or completely removing themselves from your Fan Page. Facebook Page Insights provides all this data for you.
Facebook says that the average user is connected to 60 pages, groups and events and also has 130 friends so don’t overwhelm your Fans with pointless updates just for the sake of posting. When it comes to social media, quality and not quantity rules all.
