<a href="https://www.facebook.com/melissa.hart.woods">Facebook</a>. It’s a massive social media giant that has the potential to directly connect and interact with target markets. The potential is exciting to say the least but the thrill of using Facebook for marketing gets tempered when we realize that we don’t know how we should be incorporating it into marketing strategies. Do we just randomly post as much as possible or should marketing efforts be more carefully planned and focused?

<img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-2692" title="Facebook Icon" src="http://business-strategic-solutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Facebook-Icon.png" alt="Facebook Icon" width="256" height="256" />Fortunately, studies are starting to come out that show <a title="how Facebook should be used to market your products" href="http://momentusmedia.com/whitepaper/MMwhitepaper1.pdf" target="_blank">how Facebook should be used to market your products</a>. Recently, one such study carried out by <a title="Momentus Media" href="http://momentusmedia.com/publisher/index.php/momentus/index" target="_blank">Momentus Media</a>, a San Francisco-based social media strategy firm, has found the answers to a number of questions asked by every company that uses Facebook for marketing.

Their analysis of the top 20,000 Facebook pages discovered that:
<ul>
	<li><strong>Weekends and off peak hours are the best times to post-</strong> Two to five p.m. could be the golden hour for interacting with people via Facebook. This works best for interactions because lower post activity means that people have fewer posts to choose from.</li>
	<li><strong>Post often- </strong>Although the study didn’t indicate how many posts you should do per day, it did show that frequent posting results in more interactions. While the rate at which followers unsubscribe goes up after getting three posts per day, this rate tends to level off at higher numbers of posts. This, and the fact that fewer posts increases the likelihood that potential customers will miss them, points to a positive correlation between posts and interactions. In other words, it’s probably better to post a lot even if you do lose some contacts.</li>
	<li><strong>Post more photos than links- </strong>People interact more with photos because they are fun to look at, easy to digest, and provoke comments. Videos were also popular but links were at the bottom of the list.</li>
	<li><strong>Always ask fans to “like” or comment on a post-</strong> The study showed that this increased interaction rates by over 200% so always ask for an opinion! This doesn’t mean you should post questions though, unless you directly ask people to reply in the comments.</li>
	<li><strong>The bigger the status message the better-</strong> Interaction goes up as status message length increases. This makes sense since you are giving more information for people to comment on, especially if you change it up on a regular basis.</li>
	<li><strong>People check out posts quickly-</strong> Posts were clicked by 90% of total viewers within nine hours of them going live and half of the people clicking on your post will do so in the first hour.</li>
</ul>
What <a title="Business Strategic Solutions strategies" href="http://business-strategic-solutions.com/" target="_blank">Business Strategic Solutions strategies</a> have you found useful for marketing on Facebook? Please leave a comment letting us know what has worked or not worked for your company.