Is conventional wisdom about Facebook posting strategy flawed?

Kala Philo CEO / Founder, ClearCEO

December 1st, 2016

I am questioning the conventional wisdom about Facebook posting strategy - that a company needs to provide a blend of linked content from other sites, content that links back to their sites, and then, in my space, the branded inspirational memes are very popular.

I have noticed on my wall that posts with a link outside of FB get almost no organic reach (which FB controls of course). Posts that keep the viewer on FB get much more reach.

I ran a small experiment and tracked some posts from popular FB pages in my space. I can't see their reach numbers but if we assume that "likes" are correlated to organic reach, the result is this - content that does not take the viewer out of FB gets much higher engagement (likes and shares) than content with a link outside of FB.

Here is a FB page for an extremely successful online business for female entrepreneurs, as you will see they only post branded visual content, most of it is inspirational and does not link outside of Facebook, AND the engagement (likes and shares) is extremely high.

https://www.facebook.com/FemaleEntrepreneurAssociation

I was getting ready to outsource a few months of facebook curating; now I'm thinking the money would be better spent on having a few dozen memes created and some really focused collaborative content with strategic partners to co-promote and link back to my website.

thoughts?

Dimitry Rotstein Founder at Miranor

December 1st, 2016

Maybe I didn't fully understand the question, but it's pretty obvious that you get more likes and shares staying on FB, since FB is by far the most prolific and effective social network in the world, whose main goal and expertise is to generate likes and shares.

But that doesn't mean you can't send users outside. Most of the time you have to send them elsewhere, because most products don't operate within FB.

In any case, if you do redirect users to your site off-FB, you can redirect them back using embedded "like" and "share" buttons on your site.

Last year I did a social project on my website and mostly promotes it organically via FB. The website had embedded FB buttons featured prominently at just the right spot (which users reach after using the product and, hopefully, being impressed by it). About one out of 6 visitors (or almost half the users) had pressed the "like" button, thus effectively sharing my website on FB. The website became very viral, largely thanks to this arrangement.

priyank JAIN Digital Marketing Consultant

December 5th, 2016

Hi Kala, Thanks for sharing this information. I saw your page and you are completely wrong because when you posted your meme, You shared that post around 50-100 times and when you posted a link to your website, a share was

Joanan Hernandez CEO & Founder at Mollejuo

December 1st, 2016

Thoughts?

Your analysis makes sense. Go for it!

It doesn't hurt to experiment. And of course, let us know how it went! :-)

Best of lucks!

Raj Prasad Marketing/Sales/Technology Consultant

December 1st, 2016

You are on the right track Kala. When people talk about organic traffic they are talking about exactly what you are describing. Create engaging, useful, relevant and timely content and you can drive people to your site. To use facebook to its full potential "boost" your important posts for $10 or so for one day :)

Chuck Bartok Social Media Consultant, Publisher, and Contrarian Curmudgeon

December 1st, 2016

Our outside links (to our website) generated huge organic traffic since they have so many shares.

Most recent post (page has 3,300 likes) reached 2,008 organically, generated 29 shares and over 18 comments so far.
From last week a posted directing to our website:
13,569 Organic reach
79 comments

429 shares.
so far.....
We do modestly boot post to a very targeted market. No fancy ads.

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