Summary:

For marketers, one of the most powerful aspects of Facebook is the ability to precisely measure each stage of how content is consumed and shared – whereas even sophisticated digital marketing of the past decade has often relied on estimation and imprecise audience tracking, Facebook’s value proposition to marketers and advertisers is precision in targeting and measurement.

Facebook is still a relatively young company though, and the industry of Facebook marketing even younger – to many agencies and brands, the dynamics of engagement on Facebook look like an overwhelming flurry of activity, and success looks like a stroke of luck.

There is, however, a distinct and measurable lifecycle to how content reaches fans of Facebook Pages, is amplified by paid spend and viral reach, and defines and grows a Page’s audience.

At PageLever, we’ve seen our brand and agency customers reach millions more consumers by measuring and understanding this lifecycle.

Too often obscured by the “vanity metrics” of Page Likes and audience growth, Pages that optimize for the content lifecycle on Facebook reach 2x, 3x or even 4x more of their audience organically than the average Page. The equivalent spend, in terms of Facebook Ads, that would be necessary to reach that same audience reaches into six or even seven figures for large Pages. The incentives to optimize both content and timing are at an all-time high, and the first step towards optimization is to understand the lifecycle of Facebook Pages.

For Facebook Pages, success is measured in cycles, rather than the short burst campaigns that have dominated marketing in the past.

We’ve defined four distinct stages of this cycle – audience, visibility, engagement and growth. Each stage directly depends on the one before it – there can be no engagement without visibility, because content has to be seen before it can be consumed and shared. An outstanding marketing team uses data to determine the weakest stages first, because they understand that the success of their Page hinges upon full circle execution.