Digital Corps

Facebook Platform Basics

Quick Tip!

Audience interaction is a two-way street. Keep an eye on comments made on Facebook posts that allow effective engagement and have a purpose for interacting with these posts! Interactions create lasting followers and can create more advocacy for the Digital Corps Facebook page.

Helpful Staff for this Topic

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Facebook is one of four social media platforms the Digital Corps uses to reach a wide variety of audiences. Facebook is a bit different than Twitter and Instagram because the Corps uses it to interact with parents of current employees as well as students and Digital Corps alumni. Facebook has a slightly more professional tone and is used to deliver pertinent information to parents and students, but it sometimes offers some breathing room for casual content.

Target Audience

Facebook’s demographic is different from other platforms because it includes both younger and middle-aged audiences. Eighty-eight percent of adults ages 18-29 use Facebook. However, 84 percent of adults ages 30-49 also use Facebook. These two audiences allows the Digital Corps different opportunities for engagement. It also means that content must be catered to each audience.

• College-Aged Students
  • Current Ball State students are a primary audience because they are involved in campus activities and job-hunting. Facebook is a great way to attract these students to the Digital Corps.
  • Past and current members of the Digital Corps are also important groups to include when creating content for Facebook. Past members interact with Facebook content because of the professional tone, which captures their attention. It’s also important to target current members since user-generated content is a good way to promote the Digital Corps.
• Families
  • Digital Corps family members are a unique audience on Facebook. It is important to keep families up to date on what is happening at the Corps because it creates a sense of connection for them, especially if their child is far away from home. This helps establish another audience that can share Digital Corps content and reach more users on the platform.

Optimal Times

Timing posts is an important aspect of running a successful social media account. Facebook is no different. Compared to other platforms, posting on Facebook should occur at different times to maximize reach, engagement, and impression analytics.

• Based on Digital Corps analytics, the best days to post on Facebook are during the middle of the week on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. These are the key days that people might interact with online content.
• The best times to post content on Facebook are in the morning (8-9), during lunchtime hours (11-1) and near the end of a typical workday (3-5). These times are important because people have more time to view and interact with online content.

Optimal Content

There are several types of content that are posted on Facebook. For the Digital Corps, visual elements, such as photos and videos, perform the best on the platform. Audience reactions on these types of posts are important because it indicates how particular types of content perform.

• Social Media Videos
  • The Digital Corps Social Media Videos project team produces interesting, fun, and informative content for social media. The team creates themed content as well as some informative videos that update both target audiences on things going on at the Digital Corps and to engage with them.
• Office Activities & Culture
  • The Digital Corps Facebook audience appreciates photos and videos of things happening in our office. It’s important to both audiences because it creates a sense of community in the office and piques interest into how the office works on a daily basis.

Insights

Facebook Insights drive how a manager schedules, strategizes, and creates posts for Facebook. Learning to read and understand post insights help you to tailor your content to your viewers because you’re able to understand what works on your platform and what doesn’t. You can find this data – along with other insights – in Facebook’s Creator Studio, their post-management platform for business pages.

• Reach
  • Reach is the number of unique people who saw account posts. This analytic shows how well content performs on Facebook and indicates the various ways people see the content through post, paid, or organic reach.
• Post Engagement
  • Post Engagement is the combined likes, comments, and shares on a particular post. A manager can also calculate total Engagement by taking the number of engagements on a post divided by the reach of that post. This is an important percentage to see because it indicates how much Facebook content users interact with rather than just being seen on a feed.
• Performance
  • Performance shows you how your videos are performing. You can see the total number of minutes viewed on all your videos, along with your videos’ retention rates. Understanding your videos’ performance will teach you which types of videos your audience engages with most, and what types of content to avoid.

Overall, Facebook is another platform for the Digital Corps to use because of its ability to connect with a different target audience: families. Dedicated audiences that are different from other platforms presents opportunities for user-generated content as well as the ability to reach more users on the platform and increase awareness of the Digital Corps.