Mike Andrew Consulting

Facebook Pages: Usage Patterns

By mike, Dec 03 in blog with 0 comments

Facebook Pages (popularly known as ‘Fan Pages’) are a starting point for businesses wanting to connect to millions of potential and existing customers on Facebook. A Page allows brands to disseminate marketing and service information fast and lets customers interact directly with stake holders.

Pages are also an important component of Facebook’s own revenue model[i] as 89% of Facebook’s total revenues come from brands advertising on the platform and Facebook attracts brands through Pages.

The past six months have been significant for Facebook Page owners. In the run up to its IPO and subsequently too, Facebook released a host of features such as the Timeline view, Offers, post scheduling and targeting, post-level promotions, group promotions, redesigned ad network, FB exchange etc to make Pages more attractive to businesses. The six month period has also seen a conscious effort by Facebook, and the social media industry in general, to raise awareness about Pages as potent social marketing properties.

Pages attract business users to Facebook and lead the social network’s efforts to earn advertising revenues. However, this study of 5.7 million Facebook Pages shows that business users are still struggling to adapt to Facebook as an engagement opportunity.

The study updates the findings of a similar research conducted by Recommend.ly in March 2012.

The current study discovered low levels of active Pages, fall in average number of posts and a huge drop in engagement rates since March. Page owners clearly need to do more to make Facebook work for them.
The study also found that the share of visual content on Pages has increased after the introduction of Timeline view for Pages. Also, it is found that Pages selecting specific category names such as ‘Spa’ or ‘Restaurant’ tend to be more focused and get better engagement from fans, compared to Pages choosing generic sounding category names such as ‘Local Business’.

Key Findings

About 2 out 3 Facebook Pages are inactive in some way:
- 63.9 per cent Pages have no cover photo
- 70.1 per cent Pages make 0 posts a month
- 83.4 per cent Pages never participated in conversations
- 50 per cent Pages have less than 300 fans

Pages are found to be making lesser posts in October 2012 compared to March 2012. Average number of Page posts fell by 19 per cent since March.

Engagement Rates of Page posts across categories have fallen since March by an average of 40 per cent

50-60 per cent of content on Pages is now visual content (photos or videos) compared to just 15-20 per cent in March

To read the full report please click here http://blog.recommend.ly/facebook-pages-usage-patterns/

About the author

Mike Andrew has been working with the Internet and small business for over 12 years. Mike has been a keynote speaker at conventions and seminars and conducted social media training sessions all over the world. Mike has an extensive media background having worked in electronic media for over 30 years. Mike specialises in social media and Internet marketing strategy, SEO techniques and search engine marketing campaigns. His articles appear on numerous blogs around the web as well as national magazines.