Facebook for Business – what you need to do:
Well over a billion people all over the world visit Facebook every day to connect with family and friends, and their favourite businesses. If you own your own business, then connecting with your customers by using Facebook for business promotions and marketing will give you more than thousand million opportunities to get your products and service noticed. That’s a lot!
That said, of course, Facebook is not some magic, golden-egg laying goose. Having a Facebook page for your business is a good start to increasing your visibility, building an online audience, and communicating and engaging with them in a way that will hopefully drive traffic to your website and turn leads into new customers. However, in order to successfully leverage the awesome potential of Facebook to the advantage of your business, you’ll need to take some very specific actions to optimise your Facebook presence – and keep on top of them while you’re at it too.
So, what can you do to optimise your brand’s presence on Facebook?
So, here are 6 tips to help you do so.
- Provide value
Ask yourself if the content you are posting will improve people’s lives in some way or other – is your content educating or entertaining? Your content should not simply be about your brand. In fact, if all you do is post content that tries to sell your products or services, or functions as PR for your brand, then your audience will experience this as spam, and they will disengage.Remember, being on social media is all about building relationships that eventually lead to business. So, a good rule to follow is the 70-30 rule: 70 percent of your content should be interesting and helpful to your readers, and only 30 percent should be about promoting your specific products and services. - Post regularly when you are using Facebook for business
Now you need to provide that value-add consistently and on a regular basis. Posts on Facebook have a short lifespan, so the more regularly you post, the higher the chances they will be seen. We recommend three to five times a week, with some posts containing video content. Keep experimenting with the frequency and mix of your posts and see how your audience responds, and then adjust accordingly. Do what works best for your audience and your industry.Develop a content plan that works in with your overall digital marketing strategy by mapping out when your next sale or promotion will be and how your posts will communicate it. Then use scheduling software (or Facebook’s built-in scheduler that allows you to post content and schedule it for the exact day and time that you want it to go out) to ensure you’re regularly posting content. - Involve your audience, engage and interact
This is social media, right? That means it’s all about being social – i.e. having conversations, building relationships and interacting with people.So, when people ask you a question, give them a thoughtful reply; when they comment on your posts, respond to them.Post content that lends itself to involving your audience – and ask them to respond with their views and opinions. If you’re not sure what sort of content your audience wants to see, simply ask them – like you would in any other conversation.When you customers post comments on your Facebook page, irrespective of whether they are positive or negative, make sure you respond to them quickly, using their name and showing empathy. Customers want to feel acknowledged and appreciated, and you can use Facebook as a customer service channel to start conversations with your customers and even turn a negative situation into an opportunity. - Competitions and Facebook-only specials
Another way to involve your audience is through competitions and other special promotions. People love competitions and the chance to win free stuff. If done correctly, competitions on Facebook can drive huge growth in the size of your audience. If you offer your audience discount codes and promotions that are only available to your Facebook followers, you’ll also make them feel very special. Even something as simple as giving them advance notice of an upcoming sale or special offer will make them feel like they’re in a special relationship with you. - A picture paints a thousand words
We live in an image-driven world – images catch attention, and should be an integral part of your Facebook marketing strategy. When more than 800 million Facebook posts from 2016 were analyzed for overall engagement by content development tool BuzzSumo, it found that questions (like we mentioned in Tip 3 above), images and videos were more engaging than all other post types.So, when posting on Facebook, include photos of your products, especially people using them. If you can, get customers to share their photos of them using your products. After all, there’s no better testimonial than seeing someone enjoying your products or service.Speaking of video, adding this type of content to your content mix is a great way to increase the organic reach of your posts, because people love to share video. However, bear in mind that Facebook’s NewsFeed Algorithm favours ‘native video’, i.e. video that is embedded in your Facebook page as opposed to linking to a video in an outside place like YouTube.What’s more, Facebook has recently added a dedicated video newsfeed in its mobile app and they are predicting that in five years, almost all interactions will be video-based and on mobile.So, why not get ahead of the curve by making video an ongoing feature of your content mix? It could be something as simple as posting a short video (around two minutes in length, but do experiment with what timings work for your specific audience and industry) about your product being made in the factory or, if you’re a personal trainer for example, how you conduct a personal training session, or, if you’re a motor mechanic for example, how you carry out a specific repair. You get the picture, right? - Use Facebook InsightsAs a business owner you need to measure the performance of your marketing efforts. This is where Facebook Insights can help. Facebook Insights is an analytics tool that helps you keep track of things like engagement, likes, post shares and comments, giving you lots of information about your followers, the people you’re reaching, and the people who are engaging with your content. This data is crucial not only for understanding your audience but also for measuring the success of your efforts.
Need more help?
If you would like further tips to help you optimise your Facebook page or make better use of Facebook in building an online presence that really promotes your business, then contact the team at Net Branding today. We tailor our digital marketing services to the specific requirements of your business, helping you to build relationships and trust online, and develop a successful social brand for your business.
