Sadly, Only A Small Percent See Your Facebook Posts

I was taken by surprise to read the stats on All Facebook’s post today, SHOCKER: 3% To 7.5% Of Fans See Your Page’s Posts. It’s a great article by Brian Carter. I first saw this posted on Twitter by my friends at MicControl (thanks guys!) and proceeded to RT it with my two cents.

Lately we’ve been hearing about various social media stats, which is why I posted The Best Time To Tweet Is 5pm EST on my blog this morning. Now, according to All Facebook, an average of only 7.49% of your Facebook fans are viewing your daily posts. While this may come as a shock to many, I’m not terribly surprised because I know how easy it is to get lost in the Facebook shuffle. I will admit I was expecting higher numbers. But it goes back to the adage, it’s about the quality of your fans not the quantity. Yes, we want numbers but also, yes, we want them to count.

It’s fair to say we are definitely overestimating how many fans we reach through our Facebook Pages. This goes back to why our Email list is so very important. My friend Don Harrison (also known as @Wicked_D on Twitter) recently reposted an interesting article by CD Baby’s DIY Musician blog: A Facebook Fan Has Nowhere Near the Value of a Mailing List Subscriber. In it, John Oszajca talks about how we rely too heavily on social media. And like what All Facebook is reiterating, he also states the obvious.

“For all you musicians who think that because you have 1000 “Likes” on your  Facebook page, you have 1000 actual fans… you might want to think again.”

This applies to everyone, not just musicians. We all need to think out a social media strategy. Odds are, your Facebook Page is under-performing. Just go look at your Insights (also known as your Facebook stats) and view your Page’s interactions. They say 0.5% feedback is a reasonable goal. Wow, really? Well go look at your numbers and then decide for yourself. I realized I haven’t viewed mine in awhile so I headed over to Social Networks for Musicians and GoGirls. Well guess what… my new goal is 0.5% feedback. If you don’t know how to access your Page’s Insights, go to your Facebook Page >> Edit Page >> Insights. Be sure to click on Interactions to see how your posts are measuring up. You might need a new plan to better engage your fans.

Back to Brian Carter at All Facebook. He gives the best advice.

• Have a plan for engaging your fans: Who’s going to do the posting? Do they have any experience in this? How often will they post?  Have you planned out 30 to 90 daily posts yet?
• Go for likes and comments: Without them, you don’t get visibility. If you’re not getting a one percent feedback rate, have you been trained how to get more likes and comments from posts?
• Grow targeted fans that are realistically good potential buyers for your company: Don’t just go for numbers. The businesses I’ve seen make money from Facebook grew all or most of their fans from Facebook advertising, which gives you powerful targeting options.

Be sure to read:
SHOCKER: 3% To 7.5% Of Fans See Your Page’s Posts
A Facebook Fan Has Nowhere Near the Value of a Mailing List Subscriber

And follow on Twitter:
@MicControl
@Wicked_D

So what do you think? Are you shocked to hear this? Let me know. The world and I are listening…