Recently, adding to the frustration of marketers, fan penetration numbers have seen a drop across the board. Fan Penetration is a term we use to indicate the percentage of fans a brand page averagely reaches with its content. Very critical to the success of a brand’s social presence it ultimately hits the ROI. An important Facebook insights, this percentage directly links and is dependent upon the relevancy of posts and content.
Lets face it, Facebook is a social networking site and it is primarily for individuals and not business. Moreover, they also need to monetize its business model. And therefore, Facebook have optimized their newsfeed algorithms to display content that users find interesting and engaging to make Facebook better for them (you would have imagined on the contrary).
What Facebook calls as the goal of News Feed is to ‘show people the right content at the right time’ now more than ever have become the goal of all community managers. It has become more important than ever before to look at who and what people are connected to and how they interact with content — such as what they click, share, read or comment.
Content is still the King! – Be sure to think content when your are strategizing for Facebook. Facebook does and will continue to show content from pages that tend to have engaging posts and high CTRs (clicks, likes, comments and shares) and low number of users hiding the page’s posts (low spam).
Keep it relevant and timely!
Set clear expectations (for fans and yourself) – Be sure to post content as per fans’ expectations. If that may not be the case at times (you are running a business right), set clear expectations so there is no surprise or a disconnect. Use descriptors (The ‘About’ right below the profile pic) to your advantage – call out what you have to offer.
Identify and maintain a good posting schedule – Out of sight out of mind – make sure to be on top of your fans mind. Post regularly and consistently. Identify and practice a right balance in what yu could produce as content and that that the fans would consume. In doing so the fan penetration and spam scores provided by Facebook Insights will come most handy. Do not over kill in your enthusiasm to reach out to your fans.
Use Facebook Ads, give your posts the push when required – Ads will provide you the exposure to increase penetration. Make your content creation worthwhile – make it reach your fans with a small push.
Get going and share how you are increasing your page’s fan penetration. Here are a few posts’ types that work well :
- Ask your fans to caption photos
- Post sharable photos – especially festival ones
- Quotes
- Fill in the blanks
- Timely and comical photos
- Ask questions
- Always, always, provide a ‘Call to Action’
Happy posting!
Avinash Joshi 