I talked in a previous post about how important it is to understand when you audience wants to hear from you. In most cases a hospital is trying to reach a consumer. With this being the case I started looking at three hospital Facebook pages I have oversight of (all three are similar acute care facilities in different communities).
Most of the postings were happening during business hours, and while they were getting some engagement I wondered what if these post were happening during the evening hours and on the weekends?
So starting on Sunday July 1st I started scheduling ALL of the updates to post during the evening hours and on the weekends as a test. Here are the results after ten days:
Page 1 – 1,148 Likes (Fans)
Page 2 – 723 Likes (Fans)
Page 3 – 566 Likes (Fans)
You can see a dramatic spike in reach at the time the experiment started. Also what is interesting is the slight decline of “People Talking About This.” So what does this all mean? Here are my thoughts:
- “Reach” ≠ Engagement
- It is still all about content quality
- It is about women (if you are a hospital)
- More people are online (Facebook) at night
So here is the secret: Post relivant, quality content focused at women (does not have to be about women) in the evenings and on weekends.
Question: What content frequency and schedule have you seen successful?
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That’s very interesting. I know I personally spend time at night on Facebook. I manage the facebook pages for several sporting events including a 15K and a marathon. I have started to use an old fashioned calendar and map out my posts starting with the event and working backwards. I’ve found this helps keep our fan engagement higher as I know in advance what our content, promotions, announcements, etc. is going to be. We also try to post most of our big posts on Tuesday. We’ve found that is a good day across the board when users are more engaged.
Great tips and plan. A content calendar is very important in any vertical and the more you can plan ahead the better! Would love follow these pages. Invite me to them when you have time. Thanks for connecting!
[…] times to post if you’re a hospital seeking to reach women, particularly mothers. A study by Reed Smith demonstrated how hospitals can benefit from posting on Facebook in the evening and on weekends […]