How Brands Keep You on Facebook

The average person spends almost 2 1/2 hours on social media per day, and if you’re like me it’s probably more than that. You might be thinking “I don’t use social media thaaaat much,” but you can turn on Screen Time and find out for yourself. Five minutes scrolling through Facebook during breakfast, maybe checking Instagram on your bus ride, and playing with the latest filters on Snapchat while relaxing on your couch… it all adds up! Now, this doesn’t mean you’re addicted to your phone, it just means that some companies are making content to keep you scrolling. How do they do this? Let’s take a look at the Facebook page of one of my favorite brands, Pandora, to find out.

A Post a Day… Or 5?

You log on Facebook at lunch and you see a post from Pandora. You look again after dinner and they posted again and once while you were at work. Since Pandora is one of the biggest music streaming platforms, they have a lot they can create content about. There are always artists releasing new songs and albums, so Pandora basically has an endless stream of music to create content about. For Pandora, content is the easy part. The hard part is choosing how much of it they can post. According to Meltwater, you only need to post on Facebook once or maybe twice a day. Pandora is almost consistently posting five times every day. Just because they post so much doesn’t mean they have sky-high engagement rates. With the way Facebook works the reach for each post is low. This is why branded content doesn’t drown out the posts from all your Friends.

Timing Is Everything

The next day, you go on Facebook during your lunchbreak again and notice that there’s already two posts from Pandora. There were two on your timeline yesterday during your lunch break too. Pandora has a very consistent posting schedule, so consistent it’s at the same exact times almost every day. To do that they probably use a social media management platform, like HootSuite, to schedule their posts. They do need to figure out when to post before they schedule it though. Sprout Social lists that Facebook has the most consistent engagement from around 9 AM – 3 PM. Pandora usually posts at 11 AM, 1 PM, 3 PM, 5 PM, & 7 PM EST every day. Even though some of the posts are outside of the high engagement times, you always need to keep in consideration the time zones where your demographics are.

Pictures are Worth a Thousand Words

You’re scrolling through your Facebook feed, what gets you to stop to look at Pandora’s posts? Most likely your answer is a picture that caught your eye. Photo posts are important for brands to create, according to HootSuite. Photo posts can lead to both a high engagement rate and higher brand awareness. Remember that photo with the bright colors that caught your eye and hit the like button on? It was most likely created that way on purpose. Looking through Pandora’s posts, they pick photos of artists that pop a little bit and their created photos are made using bright colors as well.

It’s Not Your Fault!

These are just some of the ways that brands on social media try to get your attention. They try to stay on your timeline in order to get you to engage with them. In addition to these practices there are other brands making other forms of engaging content as well. This content includes videos relevant to the brand and articles that contain an enticing, or sometimes even a clickbait title, on them. Brands do this because they want your attention and want you to spend time on their page. Just think of all those times you watch one food video and then keep watching similar videos that auto-play for you. Now, next time you realize you’re spending a lot of time on social media, it might not be completely your fault.

What do you think?

Have you noticed any brands consistently on your timeline? Do you think there’s other factors keeping you (and everyone else) on social media? Leave a comment down below!