Odds are, you’ve not spent much time pondering this question. You are so busy maintaining your business that you simply don’t have the bandwidth to consider what is optimal in terms of garnering the most visibility and engagement on Facebook. You may be content with letting your automated obituary function feed your Facebook page, but that’s not a satisfactory way to attract and maintain Facebook fans.
I’ve spent some time reading research and articles around this topic, and the answer to how many times you should post to your Facebook page seems to be “It depends.” It depends on your targeted demographic. It depends on your product or service. It depends on the type of content you are posting. The best suggestions I can make around posting frequency for funeral homes and funeral vendors can be summarized like this:
- For moderate sized businesses that are targeting middle age consumers you should aim to update your Facebook page at least 3 times per week and optimally up to once a day. As a general rule, research has found that posting once per week on Facebook is so low that you risk losing connection with your audience, and posting more than twice per day is crossing the line into annoying. One key study that looked at the Facebook posting schedules of a number of successful businesses found an average posting rate among them of once per day.
- You should mix up the content so your readers are not bored. Post a recognizable photograph one day, a humorous cartoon another, an inspirational or grief related quote yet another, and so on. Surprise your fans and readers from time to time. Don’t become mundane with your content…you will lose followers. Whether you only post 3 times per week or 10 times per week, content is king. Repetitive, boring content will cause you to lose followers no matter how often you post.
- While more Facebook activity happens through the week (especially on Wednesdays and Thursdays, and especially from 9:00 AM until noon), you should still try to post from time to time on weekends, if possible. Some folks only spend time on Facebook during the weekend. Now, this information is very general and elusive (one study found more peopleShared content during morning hours but Liked and Commented on content during the late afternoon), so there is no magic formula. The most accurate way to determine when your audience is active is by studying the analytic data specific to your page.
The experts say it’s impossible to know, without a shadow of doubt, what is the perfect number of times to post in a week. The best way to determine what is optimal for your situation and your market is to predict, then post, then measure, then repeat. If this whole process seems to be more than you can manage, let the experts at DISRUPT Media help you! We can craft a Facebook strategy tailored to your business using our exclusive four part FUNERAL Social Design Process. Our process is what enables DISRUPT Media to claim that we are the funeral profession’s only full-service social media management firm. Our clients who are a part of our FUNERAL Social Design Process are seeing an increase in post reach and engagement of over 300%. Go to http://funeralsocial.com to find out more about the services we offer.
