As marketers we're constantly grappling for ways to increase engagement and conversions, but when it comes to Facebook there's one fairly common technique that could cancel out everything you've ever done to make it to the top. According to new research, posting on Facebook via third party APIs is the social equivalent of shooting your brand in the foot.
According to an analysis of 1,000,000 updates across more than 50,000 Facebook pages, posting on the platform via marketing management tools like Shoutlet, Postling, Seesmic and other top ten APIs cuts engagement rates by 88 percent.
The publishers of the study believe this could be the result of a bias in Facebook's opaque edgerank algorithm, but here at Halogen we suspect this is an issue of content and programming.
Where Facebook APIs Go Wrong
There are few things more important on Facebook than brand voice, and in general, APIs kill that voice. The automated process of posting via third party sites not only reduces the opportunity to pinpoint exactly when something is released, it also creates a Facebook post that shows clear signs of automation.
While some APIs truncate content in awkward places, others don't create effective sharing thumbnails for post optimization. All show a small API logo that reads something like, "Posted via [name of third party app]." This Twitter feature is a dead automation giveaway, but perhaps this study is showing us something more important.
Brands on social platforms must cultivate their brand voice specifically for that medium. Expecting the ability to cross pollinate identical content across platforms is like putting a print ad on television and wondering why effectiveness decreases 88 percent.
We learned this lesson about Twitter when followers ignored automated headlines. Whether it's a truncated story lead on Twitter or a tweet disguised as something created for Facebook, these shortcuts don't cut it.
Here at Halogen we obsess over these kinds of issues. We study edgerank and we build influential brands. Expect more in research and numbers because this API conversation is just the beginning.