Although the click-through rates (CTR) for general display ads on Facebook have been rather low, the click-through rates for content appearing on brand pages’ walls are as high as 6.49%, according to data from Vitrue, a social media management firm. This is an extremely high response rate compared to other online ad placements and formats. However, in this case the CTR was a measure of clicks as a percentage of Facebook Page impressions, not necessarily feed impressions which would yield substantially lower results.
And more specifically, certain days of the week experience higher rates than other days. Tuesday has the highest—an average of 9.89% CTR—with Wednesday following close with 9.87%. Noteworthy is the substantial drop off in CTR starting on Thursday, which receives half the clicks of stories/news published the previous day. Friday and Saturday have the lowest CTR, with 2.67% and 2.70% respectively.
It seems we can apply the same logic we use in email scheduling (the highest open rate occurs on Tuesdays) to pushing updates within social networks.
Why should we—and all marketers—care about this data? It means we should no longer make updates whenever we feel like it or when we have a good idea, but rather carefully plot our timing so as to receive an optimum response.
And speaking of a response rate, it’s about time our industry figured out and standardized a better measurement metric which takes into account a user’s engagement with posts and feeds, versus the old-school click. Doing so will allow the CTR metric to stay situated in the land of search and display ads.
