Is Posting More On Facebook Hurting Your Brand?

As brands struggle to keep up with organic Reach on Facebook, I’ve noticed a disturbing trend.

Many smaller brands (with less than 5K Fans) are posting MORE content on Facebook to “beat EdgeRank.”

Here’s the problem with that: Posting more on Facebook could be hurting your brand.

Here’s why …

There are four reasons I think brands are posting more on Facebook (and maybe to their detriment).

1) Bad Advice: They Were Told To Post More

There are some school of thoughts that think posting more on Facebook is the “secret” to EdgeRank.

The linked post by Post Planner (an app we use and LOVE) encourages brands to follow their lead of posting up to 6 times a day.

Therein lies the problem.

Even though this solution seems to meet the Time Decay portion of EdgeRank, which asks:

“How old is your post?“

it has some problems.

For starters, most small brands aren’t even posting daily, much less several times a day. And now they’ve suddenly ramped up posting from 1 (or more likely 0) to 3+ times a day?

My guess is this didn’t “WOW” their audiences (and I can see exactly that on several small brand pages I follow because they have received ZERO engagement on these “extra” posts … and NO, your own employees “liking” something doesn’t count, sorry).

While NO ONE outside looking in can tell you how many times a day you should or shouldn’t be posting, if you aren’t garnering the goods (likes, comments, shares = Weight & Affinity with EdgeRank) then you need to rethink this advice.

Me personally? I’d rather see one or two AMAZEBALLS posts per day than 5 posts that are probably crappy memes and quotes!

2) They’re Covered In Crap (Yes, I Totally Just Shared A Pic Of The Mr. Poo Emoji)

Ah, memes and quotes.

I’ve been bitching about memes since 2013.

Yes, they can be great. NO (no, no, no, NOOOOOOOOOOO) they should not make up the majority of your posts.

Unless, say, you’re a brand like SomeeCards or I Can Has Cheezburger?.

Posting nothing but memes and quotes (or quote memes … le sigh) is not adding value to your brand.

Memes and other social media fluff are not telling your customers who you are or why they should buy from you.

How do you want to spend your precious time as a small business?

1) Encouraging people to “have a HAPPY SATURDAY” or “Keep calm and carry on”?

or

2) Helping people understand what your brand does, how it can ROCK their world, and why they should buy from you?

What Memes Would Look Like IRL

From a SteamFeed post I wrote a while back [Social Media Fluff: The Honeymoon Is Over]:

“Imagine walking into Nordstroms to buy a pair of shoes and getting accosted by a salesperson who throws glitter in your face, hands you a basket of kittens, and tells you to keep calm and carry on while shopping.

Meanwhile over the loudspeaker you hear things like:

“Sometimes you have to be your own hero.”

“Every pro was once an amateur. Every expert was once a beginner. So dream big and start now.”

“If you are waiting for the right time, it’s now.”

(I didn’t even have to scroll on my feeds to find this crap – sad!)

I don’t know about you, but I’d run screaming from Nordstroms, never to return. I don’t care if they’re my favorite store. I don’t care if they have fantastic customer service.”

Yes, visual literacy is SO SO important to the future of social media and content marketing, but that doesn’t mean visuals need to be made up of someone else’s words, kittens, or other off-brand topics.

And sure, using memes that relate to what your brand actually does is fine (used sporadically).

But original memes and quotes that show off YOUR brand far outweigh quotes from Zig Ziglar and Seth Godin.

3) They’re Posting Content For Content’s Sake

I think this 3rd point kinda ties into the 2nd point.

I feel like many brands find it extremely hard to talk about themselves – I suffer from this as well!

But it doesn’t have to be about YOU or selling; tips and tricks that your would-be customers will find helpful are both original and easy to come up with when you’re an expert in your field.

Like our Monday Marketing Tips:

These easy-peasy Monday Marketing Tips have gotten us LOTS of engagement, including the highly-coveted “share” on Facebook.

You can come up with something similar that’s branded with your logo and colors, and it will cover you when it comes to:

• Original content


• Visual content


• Branded content


• Content that helps, not sells


• Content that helps position you as a thought leader/expert

Similarly, asking questions can be a great way to gain marketing insights and research, but asking dumb questions like,

“What are you eating right now?“

(unless you’re a restaurant or food brand) is just posting to post.

And while the novelty may be fun and get you a few “likes” here and there, it’s probably not going to do much to sell clients.

Instead of posting to post — or using the dreaded ‘Post & Pray Method‘ — try to come up with posts that will help people understand:

1. WHO your brand is


2. WHAT your brand does


3. HOW your brand is different from competitors


4. Why to SHARE your love


5. How to SPREAD your wisdom

4) They Haven’t Educated Themselves About Content Shock

Content Shock, a term coined by Mark Schaefer of {grow}, is very real.

In fact, Conent Shock is why Facebook recently tweaked their algorithm (EdgeRank) again.

Don’t believe me?

Read for yourself (from Facebook):

“People are connecting and sharing more than ever. On a given day, when someone visits News Feed, there are an average of 1,500¹ possible stories we can show.

As a result, competition for each News Feed story is increasing. Because the content in News Feed is always changing, and we’re seeing more people sharing more content, Pages will likely see changes in distribution. For many Pages, this includes a decline in organic reach. We expect this trend to continue as the competition for each story remains strong and we focus on quality.”

In laymen’s terms: Because of Content Shock, Pages will see decreased organic reach (unless you pay for reach through ads) and the competition will grow more and more fierce as more and more quality content gets created.

LET ME SPELL IT OUT FOR YOU:

1. Competition for QUALITY content is fierce (Facebook has already said memes are considered low quality content)


2. Since EVERYONE is following a “post memes of quotes from Zig Ziglar” mentality, your quotes and memes from Zig Ziglar are not unique, relevant, quality, or likely to beat EdgeRank (yes, even if you make it “yours” by creating an “original” graphic in Canva)


3. As smarter and bigger brands work on creating ORIGINAL, in-depth, extremely helpful content , you (as a small guy) will have a harder and harder time competing with their content on Facebook and with Search Engines


4. We, as consumers, can only read so much content in a day – we will continuously seek out better content


5. You will have to spend more and more on ads or the creation of original content to try and play catch up

Scary, right?

The takeaway here is that if you want even the slightest chance of competing against the “big guys,” you need to start creating some seriously tantalizing, absolutely-unique-t0-what-you-do content.

Again, YES, entertain your audiences from time to time with a stupid meme, or enlighten them with a funny fact, or brighten their day with a quote.

But don’t you dare get stuck in this (not even) status quo of posting crap on Facebook.

Don’t let posting more on Facebook turn into creating more uninteresting, irrelevant, not-needed and not-searchable content for consumers to push in their quest to find what it is they’re looking for.

Don’t be NOISE.

Is Posting More On Facebook Hurting Your Brand?

Perhaps. Do yourself a favor and check out those extra posts.

Did they get engagement? Or crickets?

If they didn’t get engagement in the way of likes, comments and shares (and NO, not by you/your employees) then you actually could be going against EdgeRank’s Weight and Affinity and showing Facebook that your audience just doesn’t care about your posts.

Which means they’ll see less content from you.

It’s a vicious cycle.

Your best bet is to:

1. Keep testing content to see which posts get the most engagement (use Insights, a 3rd-party API, your own KPIs, or all of those)


2. Create more of that content


3. Share more of that content


4. Retest (more engagement = more sharing, less engagement = less sharing)


5. Repeat and keep repeating for the lifespan of your Facebook page

Do you test your content regularly? Have you started posting more on Facebook? Has it done well or not-so-well? Let us know in the comments section below!

See you in the social sphere!

Is Posting More On Facebook Hurting Your Brand?