Facebook Study: Post a Coupon in the Morning

For years, e-mail marketers have sought to know what message types perform best, what day of the week they should send them, and what time of day will generate the most response. Now Vitrue is applying the same questions to the Facebook platform.

The Atlanta-based social media company has analyzed the "like" activity of 42.6 million Facebook users on 32,000 of its customers' Facebook posts. The results focus on Facebook pages for consumer packaged goods (CPGs) and quick serve restaurant (QSRs) brands.

Recession Aids Facebook Performance

The good news for QSRs: They have 62 percent higher engagement rates per post - calculated by combining likes, comments, and shares - than other brand sectors. That's not the most surprising finding, since recession-minded consumers are paying close attention to posts containing coupons and specials on meals.

Meanwhile, CPGs have garnered 41 percent higher engagement than the average brand using the Vitrue platform. Once again, coupons and savings appear to be at the center of that data-point.

Images Rule On Facebook, Beating Video And Text Handily

In all niches, images/photos outperformed video and text on Facebook by 22 percent and 54 percent, respectively, in terms of engagement.

For CPGs in particular, the advantages to images are more dramatic, as they outdid video by 204 percent and text by 86 percent. Text, meanwhile, received 63 percent more engagement than video when it came to Vitrue's CPG brands.

For QSRs, according to the study, images got 136 percent more engagement than video and 182 percent more than text.

Post Brand Updates Early in the Day, Late in the Week

Early birds get the worm on Facebook. For all brands, Vitrue says that posts made before noon get 65 percent more engagement than ones authored in the afternoon. CPGs get 21 percent more engagement in the morning, while QSRs reap 12 percent more.

Lastly, for all brands, the best day to post is Friday, and Sunday and Saturday are the worst. For CPGs, Thursday generates the highest engagement rates, while Wednesday creates the lowest. However QSRs should post every Wednesday; Vitrue says consumers like to reward themselves with a meal on "hump day."

For the report, Vitrue studied numerous brands that use its social relationship management system. Some of its customers include McDonald's, Best Buy, Kellogg's, AMC Theatres, 3M, and other notable companies. The data was collected from the beginning of May through Aug. 1. The study uses an engagement rate that combines Facebook comments, likes, and shares and divides them by the number of "likers" in a particular activity stream.