Be friend with your Facebook Insights Report.
Are you looking for information about Facebook in Singapore? Look through with your Facebook Insight report, With more than 2 billion active monthly users globally, Facebook is no doubt the largest social networking platform in the world. Here in Singapore, more than 4 million people use Facebook and this number is expected to hit 4.5 million by 2023. Its popularity makes it the ideal platform for social media marketing in Singapore.
To succeed in Facebook marketing in Singapore, you need to identify the target audience then decide the right time to post. Getting the two right will massively help your business to stand out from the crowd and connect with a broader audience cost effectively.
Is there A Right Time to Post on Facebook in Singapore?
This is one of the most common questions that we get from businesses and individual digital marketers who want to get more results from Facebook advertising. The truth is that there is no single best time to post a comment, ad, or link on Facebook.
Numerous studies have been done in an attempt to determine the best time to post on Facebook as well as other popular social media platforms in Singapore such as Twitter and Instagram. As expected, each study recommends different times and gives its own independent reasons why you should post on Facebook at a particular time of the day.
Over the last two weeks, we have been looking at the study reports and concluded that the report by Buffer is the most accurate and ideal for anyone who wants to get more sales through Facebook marketing in Singapore.
According to the report, the best time to post on this platform is between 1 pm and 3 pm during weekdays and Saturdays. The study found out that the engagement rates on Thursdays and Fridays is 18% higher compared to other days of the week.
Let us briefly look at the result from other studies.
- Buzzsumo: Off-peak
- TrackMaven: Thursday at 8 p.m.
- Hubspot: Thursdays and Fridays from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.
- . CoSchedule: Between 1 and 4 p.m. and late into the week and during the weekends
All five studies can point you in the right direction when doing Facebook marketing. However, it is important to note that different audiences have different behavioural patterns and so you need to do A/B tests to know which the best time to post on Facebook is.
For example, a company that sells beauty products may find that most of its ads record the highest engagement when posted late into the week because this is the time when a majority of its target audience is free.
Concisely, understanding your target audience and continuous A/B tests will come in handy when decided the best time to post on Facebook. The geographic location of your audience will also determine the level of engagement your ads and posts on Facebook will garner.
Best Strategies to Know When to Post on Facebook in Singapore
Now that we have looked at the best time to post on Facebook, let us shift gears and look at tips on what you should be posting. However, before we do that, it is important to note that content crust is truly upon us and it will become more difficult to grasp the attention of the target audience moving forward.
Facebook News Feed algorithm is updated regularly to ensure that users only view content that is relevant to them. The company recently stated in one of its official blog articles that on average, 1500 stories could be displayed in one person News Feed each time they log into the account.
For users who have thousands of friends, the number can increase to 15,000 stories. As a result, competition in the News Feed is getting stiffer by the day especially for Facebook marketers.
Strategy 1# Based on your Data
When doing digital marketing in Singapore through Facebook, it is highly recommendable to rely only on your data. The best data is always your own and Facebook Analytics will help you gather and interpret it correctly. Concisely, an in-depth understanding of your target audience and how your past and current content is perform will help you make informed decisions and get more positive results, than generic insights from a range of brands and industries.
Strategy 2# When it’s Relevant to Post
Some content will deliver the best results in the moment or at the time when it is most relevant to the target audience. A good example is how sports team share scores as the game is ongoing and shortly after the game.
The same strategy can be applied in business. Some pieces of content such as articles with valuable information about your niche will perform best when they are relevant to the audience.
For instance, you should consider sharing information about a new product that you recently launched directly following the announcement. If you are running the ads on a local TV station, consider creating and sharing the content around the same time that the ad is broadcasted.
Using Facebook Insights to Know the Best Time to Post
As mentioned earlier, Facebook Insights will provide all the data you need to make the right decisions as opposed to generic insights. You can access this by login to your account, click on Insights tab located at the top of your page.
A dashboard with a generous amount of data will be displayed. Since we are only focussed on knowing the best time to post on Facebook we will look at only two specific areas namely:
How to Know When Your Fans are Online
On the Insights dashboard, select Posts option in the left-hand column and click on it to see a breakdown of the times and days that a majority of your fans are active on Facebook.
The chart shows the average times that they are online across the week. You can narrow your research to specific days of the week by moving your cursor over each day and comparing the figures with the averages. Ideally, you should post when a majority of your fans are online.
Finding Posting Times of Successful Facebook Posts
Facebook Insights is wired to keep a record of both engagement and reach figures garnered by each post that you publish on your Facebook Page. Go to Page Insights, Click on Posts and below the graph that shows the times most of your fans are online, click on “All Posts Published”.
In the published column, you will see the time and date that you published the post as well as the reach and engagement figures. Carefully look at the data to identify trends regarding the time. Ask yourself, do posts published on a specific time of the day tend to get more engagement or reach.
Note that Sponsored posts will have significantly higher reach than the organic posts regardless of the time that you published them.
Powerful Marketing Tips that Actually Work on Facebook
Facebook is still one of the most powerful social media platforms that you can use for digital marketing even though it has its fair share of ups and downs. Recently, Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company has putting in measures to reduce the impact ads have on news feed. The decision will have an impact on marketers, but Facebook algorithm will change to ensure that marketers still get a return on investment from the ads they post.
Why Facebook is the most powerful marketing tool?
Millions of businesses from across the globe rely on Facebook for marketing. The platform has more than 2 billion active users, so one ad has the potential to be seen by millions of people from all across the globe. No other platform has such high numbers include YouTube which has 1.5 billion monthly active users. 93% of marketers have confirmed using Facebook more than once to connect with the target customers through ads.
Top 15 Powerful Facebook Marketing Tips for Businesses
Despite its popularity, the changes in algorithm have marketers and companies worried about the future. We spent the last couple of weeks researching about how to use the platform for marketing despite the changes.
1. Ensure the Business Page is in the Right Category
The first thing that we need to point out is that you need to have a business page to advertise professionally on Facebook. Gone are the days when we would get away with using a personal profile for marketing.
Currently, Facebook has six categories that you can use to set up the business page.
Each category has its own unique features that you should consider when making the selection. From experience, Local Business and Brand Categories work for most businesses that have a brick-and-mortar store and a website. In the local business category, there is a section that allows one to input the physical address.
2. Secure a Vanity URL for your Business Page
Having a vanity URL will make your business page stand out from the other similar pages on this social media platform.
Make sure that this URL has your business name and target keyword for purposes of SEO. In fact, it is recommendable to include the same keywords you target via the main website so that Google bots can easily identify the connection and link them both.
3. Ensure All Photos are Optimised
Like any other form of digital marketing, you need to have good quality photos to connect with the target audience. Since social media platforms such as Facebook are highly visual, you need to ensure that all the photos you upload are highly optimised.
The cover photo should be directly related to your business. That is, the customers who come across the page should get an idea of your brand and what it offers by just looking at this cover photo.
The takeaway is that your cover photo should paint a positive image of your brand and lure the users to scroll through it.
4. Include a CTA Button
Without a CTA (call-to-action) button, customers will not know what to do after they come across the business page and browse through its contents. You can use the CTA button to motivate the users to join your emailing list or visit your website.
The current options for CTA are;
- Watch Video
- Shop Now
- Play Game
- Sign Up
- Book Now
- Contact Us
- Use App
Make sure that the CTA you decide to use links to the right page on your website. Consider your conversion goals when making this crucial decision. Information about your Facebook audience will come in handy because you already know what they are likely to ignore and what they can click.
5. Have a Custom Facebook Tabs
If you look at QuickSprout page, you will see that it has custom sidebar that reflect the goals of the website. You too can create custom tabs for your business page at no fee at all. One of the benefits of having custom tabs is that you can include another CTA, answer more questions that the audience may have about your brand, and you can include pertinent information related to your company.
Moz page has a custom tab which contains a CTA that uses can click on to try out their free trial service. Do the same to get more Facebook followers to check out your landing pages. You can actually include more than one CTA button in the custom tab.
6. The 70-20-10 Rule
The above 5 steps are enough to optimise your business page better than your competitors. The next important step that you need to take is creating content to engage with the followers. Test different content formats to identify one that best resonates with your audience.
Link and visual based forms of content work for most companies.
Test different formats and stick with the ones that generate the most traffic for your brand. If you are having trouble balancing the content, use the 70-20-10 rule as a guide.
- 70% original content
- 20% content that is relevant to your followers
- 10% self-promotional content
Spice up the content periodically by using observations, callouts, and questions related to your industry. Otherwise, if you just offer links to your blogs, the audience will soon get bored and ignore the posts. Polls and fun questions will spark engagement with the audience.
7. Make Your Posts Clean
Make sure that every post stands out from the crowd to get the highest engagement levels. Otherwise, it will fade into the vast space within hours. A post that is accompanied by a relevant photo is 10 times likely to generate engagement than a plant text post.
If the post is meant to share a link, make sure that you delete the URL to make the post clean. If you must include it, use a URL shortener to make it look neat and appealing to the audience. The clean your posts are, the more likely the audience will share them.
8. Leverage User-Generated Content
Creating your own content all the time is OK but sometimes its good to change the norm. The audience will love the user-generated content that you share regularly. It will actually show them that you care about their feelings towards the brand.
Such content has been proven to promote brand loyalty. For example, you can share photos or videos of discussions that you have with some of the followers or industry experts. Buffer is a good example of a company that uses this strategy to engage with the users.
You can even ask them to share photos using the product in return for a discount or coupon on their next paste. That will show that the followers are recognised and feel included.
9. Post Videos Preferably Live Videos
Video content works magic on social media platforms such as Facebook. More than 100 million hours of video are watched daily via Facebook. The popularity of video is expected to continue growing in the coming years as more marketers join the wave.
Facebook algorithm also prefers videos to other forms of content. This means that your posts that have video will appear at the top.
85% of people will most likely watch the videos without sound, so captioning the videos is highly recommended. 80% of the users also get annoyed when the videos auto-play sound so be making sure that the post is setup correctly.
Facebook Live is also one of the best ways of engaging with the target audience. You can use a live video to explain how the product works or respond to frequently asked questions. You can request the audience to ask questions during the live session.
10. Analyse Performance of Content Using Facebook Page Insights
Facebook Page Insights will help you to know the performance of your content. This page will show you how the audience engages with the content and which is the most preferred format. For example, if link content type works best, create more of it to continue engaging with audience.
The three main metrics are;
- Engagement: The total number of unique Facebook users who engage with the posts and pages
- Post Reach: The total number of unique views that the posts accrue over a given period of time
- Page Likes: Total likes overtime and total new likes
11. Use Facebook Insights to Know Best Time to Post
As you will notice, posts will get different levels of engagement depending on when you post. It would be difficult to know the best time to post without the help of a tool such as Facebook Insights report. The tool will help you to know the best time and day to post different forms of content.
Go ahead and use this information to know the best times to post by using the metrics displayed in the report. For instance, you can decide to post comic posts during non-peak times and formal posts during peak times.
Note that different audiences respond to posts differently, so don’t be tempted to use the timings used by your competitors.
12. Analyse User Behaviour Continuously
Facebook Audience Insights is another important tool that will help you to get a clearer understanding of your audience. The difference between Audience Insights report and Page Insights report is that it provides pure engagement metrics.
Information such as the gender and age of the people who respond to your posts will give you an upper hand. It will help you to come up with content that best resonates with the interests of your followers. More importantly, it will help you to create and manage Facebook Ads by giving you hints on which ads will work best for your brand.
13. Use Facebook Ads to Promote Your Page
You cannot rely on organic posts to increase the popularity of your Facebook Page and the followers. Thankfully, Facebook Ads can help you get more followers within a shorter period of time and on your budget.
Keep tabs on new Facebook algorithms to ensure that your ads are properly set up and capable of helping you get more followers. As mentioned earlier, you should not be wary of the algorithm changes- if you have a clear understanding of the audiences and targeting them right, your ads will be displayed to them.
14. Don’t Promote the Page on Facebook Alone
Yes, the post will give you organic followers, but you can achieve better engagement levels if you promote the page outside Facebook. For example, you can include a link to the page in your Paid Ads as well as promoted posts.
If you are already doing email marketing, include a small link to the page in each email that you send out. Go an extra mile by making all your blog posts shareable via Facebook and other social media platforms that your audience is fond of such as Twitter.
Business cards are still relevant even in the modern-day digital marketing landscape. Go ahead and include your page vanity URL in the cards. Exciting promotions and deals will encourage them to follow your page to leverage them.
15. Hire Influencers
Influencer marketing is one of the most powerful ways to reach out to niche specific audiences. If you are not getting enough followers yet after applying the 14 methods discussed in this article, spring into action and hire an influencer. The ideal influencer should be someone whose followers are part of your target audience. If you are selling shoes, hire an influencer who is fond of posting content related to shoe brands.
Closing Remarks
Knowing the best time to post on Facebook in Singapore will help you get better results from your Singapore Facebook marketing campaign. Use Facebook Insights to know when you should post. Our social media marketing experts in Singapore can help you interpret the data and do Facebook marketing smarter. Furthermore, it is possible to promote your brand via Facebook despite the current and upcoming algorithms. But you don’t have to do all the hard work, we, MediaOne Marketing, have a team of digital marketers who can create and optimise a page for your business. . Contact us today for a free and no obligations consultation session. We will help you get ahead of the competition.
