Facebook is important to your social media marketing strategy because it has more users than any other social media platform with roughly 6...
Facebook is important to your social media marketing strategy because it has more users than any other social media platform with roughly 62% of its users logging on daily. What better way to engage with people than the largest worldwide web platform? Facebook is becoming a central hub for the worldwide web because of its integration with many other websites. It is in your best interest to invest some time and money into Facebook. Take some time to prepare a marketing strategy that will focus on your page, what ads you will create and who you will target, what groups you may want to join and/or create, and how you will market yourself.
Once you have selected your category, you can select an industry-specific category. Then you will get into filling out some details about your business such as your website address, contact information (address and phone number,), a description about your business, upload a profile picture, etc.
You really need to focus on filling out the ‘About’ section. Do not leave your contact details blank because this is how your customers or potential customers will be able to reach you. You do not want them searching for contact information. Contact information needs to be readily available for ease. People are using social media as a way to find out information quicker and easier. Making it hard for them to find out information about your company, especially the most important – contact information – will hurt your ratings. You need to provide a short description that will be used during search results on search engines such as Google and you need a longer description that provides more detailed information about your business. The description can be information about why you went into business, what your products and services intend to do, what you offer, your price range, your hours of business, parking information, etc. The more you provide the easier it is for your viewers to understand your business. Remember, although many people will head to your website afterwards, there are still many others who will be treating your Facebook page as your website. Upload as much information about yourself as possible, including reviews. Think of the ‘About’ section of your Facebook page as similar to that of the ‘About’ section on your own website. What are customers going to be looking for? Is there anything you need to specifically say? The cleaner, more professional and intriguing your Facebook page looks, the more leads that will turn into customers will roll through. Also, make sure you upload a profile picture and cover photo that represent your business. Typically, this should be a logo or something that truly represents your business. Your images need to be identifiable with your brand.
It is a paid for feature ($8 per month for a subscription) that allows you to create up to 40 customizable questions with images and/or videos to make it more interactive. You can achieve even more likes by using the referral contest feature. A referral contest simply provides participants with a chance to win something if they refer the contest to friend. Once that friend participates via invitation, they are eligible for the prize. It is a win-win for everyone involved.
The poll allows you to track the origin of participation whether it’s by invitation from you, your wall, a friend, a friend’s wall, or link shared. You can all see charted results at the end of the pool on a dashboard that is fully exportable. It is an easy and fun feature to get some engagement and conversation flowing on your page.
While posting specific promotions and coupons that are available solely to your followers is a great way to stay in touch with them and make them feel special, you can also use promotions in Facebook ads. This will open up to a wider array of Facebook users, and can result in leads pouring in. This is a great tool to use if you’re going through a slow period of sales and want to ramp up the sales margins.
One advantage of videos is that you can get a lot of engagement right away. Videos on Facebook now automatically play as you scroll past, but are muted, letting people view them quickly to see if they would like to see more. By using a video that engages the user from the start, perhaps by using props or a big opening scene, you can get a much higher engagement. Everyone likes to look at something that looks entertaining and fun, or peaks their interest, so taking the time to really craft your opening scene can play out well for you in the end. You can also try using Featured Videos, uploaded daily, weekly, monthly, whatever works for you and your customer base. People love to tune into the things that only they want to view, and by getting similar content and more information on a topic, you will create great user engagement. Another great way to get more views for Facebook Videos is to try using the call-to-action button on your Facebook page. This button allows you to post a scene, or a specifically designed poster for your video, and will take the user to your desired video platform, be it your YouTube channel or your website.
Although not available to everyone, another great video feature that Facebook is rolling out is Live Video Broadcasting. By using livestream on Facebook you can connect with users by streaming an event, or a webinar/promotion while it’s happening. You can get subscribers to your Live Video Broadcasting, which is a great way to see how many people are interested in your Live Video feeds, gaining more subscribers as the masses join the few. If you’re going to try Live Video Broadcasting, make sure to let the public know that you will be doing a Live Video next week, another post in the beginning of that week, and then put out a post that day reminding followers that they can tune in. You should continue doing these posts even as your subscribers multiply, continuously adding new subscribers to your list and letting other Facebook users know about your video(s). Pro tip: make sure your internet connection is strong. This is not the time to be posting Live Videos from your lake with the touch-and-go service. You don’t want your followers and subscribers thinking that you cannot put out a proper video.
Scripting is key even though this video will be live. You don’t want to go in without knowing at least a little bit of what you’re going to say. Write up a great introduction to your video that those who are just tuning in can read. Make this as intriguing as possible to gain more subscribers, followers, and views. Don’t forget to introduce yourself to your viewers before starting your video, each and every time. No matter how famous you are, it is always courteous to introduce yourself. You can make this simpler as time goes on and as you gain more followers and subscribers.
Many people may start to comment on your video as you are shooting, so take the time to read the comments and answer any questions or concerns that they may have. They may even have great ideas for new videos for you to produce next week. The more often you post, and the longer the video(s), the more possible viewers you may engage with. Make a schedule and take the time to think about what you will be covering in your Live Video Broadcast. Maybe you will be doing a How-To Video or a walk around your office. A great video down the road once you have a few subscribers under your belt is to address your viewers and answer all of their questions, either from previous videos or in real-time from this video. Videos are fun, easy and a great way to gain exposure in social media.
It is also important to post shareable photos. By this I mean post images that people want to share. Make it something that is funny, interesting, valuable, and worth someone’s time. Another great way to get your users to engage in your photos is getting them to post photos of themselves using your products, or any that you have that were submitted by customers. You can urge them to share these photos to their friends and family.
Also, make sure you tag people in your photos whether it is other organizations or individuals. This is another great way to get your photos circulating the Facebook world.
Last, post photos as often as you can. The more you post, the more people will see. It is one of the best ways to engage people and advertise your brand.
Focus on getting more fans. You do this by promoting your new Facebook page by word of mouth, signage at your business, on your website, flyers, menus, packaging and shopping bags, or even mailings that go out to your current customers. Start inviting your friends to like your page, like related businesses and like industry-specific businesses, like content of other business, invite other businesses to connect, post shareable content as discussed in the previous section, post upcoming events on your page, and start sharing promotions. Remember to focus on the content that you post as discussed previously. Post photos, events, links, quotes and graphics, product descriptions, images of your business, and videos. Don’t forget to tag those who are in the photos. If you hold an event and tag customers and their friends in the uploaded photo, they can share it with their own friends, garnering the branch out effect of Facebook’s timeline. If any of those who are following you or are friends with you are in any photos, or if they are interested in any products and/or services from your company, share your specific post onto their timeline. Their friends will be able to see this, starting that branching out effect again. Start interacting with your customers through polls and questions and be as responsive as you can when they do engage. Schedule your posts on a weekly basis so that you know exactly when and what you are going to post. By posting on a consistent basis you are influencing engagement.
Use Facebook tabs to your advantage by linking to your other social media accounts, create a shop on Facebook (talked about in more detail below), embed a signup form for your newsletter, include fun customizable contests and sweepstakes, and add your business information so that people can ‘check in’ at your business.
You can see what posts you have made incurred the most engagement including the most likes, comments and shares. You can see how many people your post reached, who clicked on the post, and how many people reacted to it. These can also be broken down by post type: posts, photos, videos, and links.
Insights also lets you know when your followers are actually on Facebook. Insights provides statistical information for creating target audience ads and when to promote those ads.
The information you obtain helps you understand your audience better. The more you understand your audience the better marketing content you can create and promote.
Facebook offers seven call-to-actions: Book Now, Contact Us, Use App, Play Game, Shop Now, Sign Up and Watch Video.
Book Now can be used to book new appointments directly from your page. Shop Now allows you to create a Facebook shop where customers can shop directly off of Facebook without ever having to leave making getting a sale even easier. Sign Up is an easy way to get followers to sign up for a Newsletter. All of the call-to-action buttons can be used effectively to engage your customers and keep them from leaving your Facebook page. This is a great tool to effectively tie in your outside websites and communicate between all of your web interfaces.
In essence, the buttons are for communicating to your audience, to drive traffic to your other sites or provide an easy way to get your customers to do ‘something’ – perform some action.
Pinning posts is a fantastic marketing technique when you have large events coming up, if you have sale events, promotions or new products/services. For example, let’s say that you have a huge sale event coming up for the Labor Day holiday. You may want to create a nice image that states when the event will be, what the discounts will be, how long it will last, etc. Make it readable, flashy, and shareable so that when you post it followers will want to read it and share it. Plus, when new people visit your page they will not scroll on by it as it will be the very first post on your page.
To pin a post at the top of your page, make the post, load the image, and after it has been saved and posted then click on the downward-facing arrow on the top right-hand corner of the post. From the drop-down menu, select ‘Post to Top’. That post will now stay at the top of your page, until you unpin it. Pinning posts is a wonderful advertising tool to use for any business owner.
Then you select an image or a set of images to associate with your ad and give your campaign a name. When you are posting photos with your ad set, which is highly recommended, make sure that your photo doesn’t contain 20% or more of text. Facebook will automatically reject your ad, causing you wasted time and money, which can cause frustration within your company, especially if you are hiring someone to make up a specific logo or banner ad. If your logo itself has too much wording, look into making up a specific one just for Facebook ads. This gives you the opportunity to make a simple logo that can be used in smaller ads, or as your Google URL logo as well. Instead of using your photos for all of your call-to-action text, use the headline and description boxes to help bring attention to your ad. These will go above and below your ad image, providing details to your ad.
Last, you will begin selecting your audience. Here is where you can select a location, age range, gender, language, behaviors, etc. allowing you to narrow in on who you want to focus on for a particular ad. If you have a specific audience picked out already, that’s great. You can also upload your e-mail contact list onto Facebook to target audiences that are already your clients, or who are potential clients. This is a great tool to use, bringing more awareness to your business to people who would be more likely to refer you to their friends and family.
If your ad has been running for a while and your budget needs to change, or you see that it isn’t performing that well, you can always go in and edit the lifetime or daily budget (depending on which one you chose) and the end date of your ad. If you want your ad to run for one more day, but want the daily amount to be doubled, simply increase the daily amount and set the end date for 24 hours later. You can always change the exact time an ad will end, which can come in handy. If an ad is set to end before 9:00am the following day, you should push it to at least 10:30am in order to gain more views. People look at their phones and log onto Facebook early in the morning when they first arrive to work and before their day gets busier.
The ad tool also provides you with analytics to help you understand how your ads performed and what you can do to improve your reach and engagement. The best way to increase engagement on your Facebook page, your ads and your overall lead generation, is to use the ‘send people to your website’ option. You can post your photo(s) or video(s) with a description, a call-to-action and watch as the leads roll in. This may not work for every single ad set, and you will have to play around with a few different ideas. Try making an ad set with the same features and targets, but with different wording and photo(s). Then, track your impressions (whether or not anyone liked it, commented, or shared your ad), the money spent and how many clicks to your website were generated. If one ad is performing better than the other, get rid of one ad and continue on. Try making up a few different ads, even if one is working well. You don’t want the same ad running through Facebook newsfeeds for months on end. People will get tired of seeing the same ad and get fed up with you and your company, or they may assume you are making no new developments or products. Instead, switching up which ads you use will help keep users engaged with you, your company and any promotions, products or events you may have going on.
You can use Facebook ads to help promote a certain product, get more people to an event, or just let everyone know a little more about your business and gain exposure. Mixing up the different ads, with one running to gain exposure while another features a certain product, then swapping with an event ad or other great products, will keep people excited to actually see these ads and engage with them.
Remember that there may be a lot of comments on your ads, some good and some bad. Make sure you reply back to these comments and any messages that may come your way to increase engagement with your Facebook page and your overall social media and business appearance. When you’re using social media as a platform for marketing in business, your social media presentation is linked with your business one.
Facebook ads are a very powerful tool to help increase your engagement and revenue stream. You can make ads for anything, be it events, new products, a sale, or your brand in general. Use ads to generate more leads, clicks to your website, views, whatever you had chosen above. Use it to your advantage and use target audiences to effectively market your business.
These contests can be based on an action so that a user must do something in order to get access to your campaign. For example, in order to write a caption for your photo caption contest, they must follow you on Facebook. To enter into a sweepstakes program, users must enter in their email address into a form first, which generates email leads for you. Polling allows you to find out more about your followers. Use this one for fun, but also use it as a way to get to know your audience.
People love to win free stuff and will get involved if there’s the possibility of free product or money on the line. By giving away free product over social media, you will be able to engage with your followers, and other Facebook users, on another level and will get a great amount of e-mails or followers for lead generation. If your goal is to get followers on your Facebook page, set it up so they have to follow you in order to participate. If it’s to simply gain more leads, use the e-mail given to sign them up for a newsletter or send them a friendly e-mail thanking them for signing up for the promotion. There are many different routes and ideas that you can use to make your campaign or contest successful, bringing in both leads and letting you get involved with future customers.
Reporting is also a feature that is extremely useful for businesses. There are analytical tools much like Facebook Insights available that can provide you with valuable information and reports about your user engagement, average response rates, page likes, follower change rates, and comparison tools that provide you with comparison data. You can view information about your competitor’s pages such as what advertising might be working for them, their reach rates, engagement information, etc. You also have the option to see what your ad campaign value is. There are all sorts of reporting and statistics available; it is up to you to choice what is best for you. Do your research and find out what tools are best for you.
YOUR FACEBOOK PAGE SETUP
The first thing you need to do is set up your Facebook page. The first thing you will need to do is choose the category. Facebook allows you to choose from six different categories:- Local Business or Place
- Company, Organization or Institution
- Brand or Product
- Artist, Band or Public Figure
- Entertainment
- Cause or Community
Once you have selected your category, you can select an industry-specific category. Then you will get into filling out some details about your business such as your website address, contact information (address and phone number,), a description about your business, upload a profile picture, etc.
You really need to focus on filling out the ‘About’ section. Do not leave your contact details blank because this is how your customers or potential customers will be able to reach you. You do not want them searching for contact information. Contact information needs to be readily available for ease. People are using social media as a way to find out information quicker and easier. Making it hard for them to find out information about your company, especially the most important – contact information – will hurt your ratings. You need to provide a short description that will be used during search results on search engines such as Google and you need a longer description that provides more detailed information about your business. The description can be information about why you went into business, what your products and services intend to do, what you offer, your price range, your hours of business, parking information, etc. The more you provide the easier it is for your viewers to understand your business. Remember, although many people will head to your website afterwards, there are still many others who will be treating your Facebook page as your website. Upload as much information about yourself as possible, including reviews. Think of the ‘About’ section of your Facebook page as similar to that of the ‘About’ section on your own website. What are customers going to be looking for? Is there anything you need to specifically say? The cleaner, more professional and intriguing your Facebook page looks, the more leads that will turn into customers will roll through. Also, make sure you upload a profile picture and cover photo that represent your business. Typically, this should be a logo or something that truly represents your business. Your images need to be identifiable with your brand.
TYPES OF MARKETING CONTENT FOR FACEBOOK
Poll Feature
Facebook polling is a perfect way to engage users. You set up the polls with customizable forms that are accessible on all devices including mobile phones and tablets. The hope is that you can expand your reach beyond your current followers by sharing the poll.It is a paid for feature ($8 per month for a subscription) that allows you to create up to 40 customizable questions with images and/or videos to make it more interactive. You can achieve even more likes by using the referral contest feature. A referral contest simply provides participants with a chance to win something if they refer the contest to friend. Once that friend participates via invitation, they are eligible for the prize. It is a win-win for everyone involved.
The poll allows you to track the origin of participation whether it’s by invitation from you, your wall, a friend, a friend’s wall, or link shared. You can all see charted results at the end of the pool on a dashboard that is fully exportable. It is an easy and fun feature to get some engagement and conversation flowing on your page.
Special Promotions and Coupons
A lot of people like and follow a brand’s Facebook and Twitter pages because they hope to receive special incentives and offers. It is a great idea to post special promotions your business may be offering or coupons every once in a while to keep those people coming back and to entice new people to follow your page. Promotions and coupons are things people love to get on Facebook. You do not have to have promotions or coupons all of the time, but every once in a while it is a great way to give back to your customers and followers. Putting up a post about special promotions and coupons can help you achieve greater leads. You can post special promotions that only your Facebook followers would get. Don’t post these on your other social media accounts, which will take away from the theme here. Instead, offer incentives to only those who follow you, or will follow you. People love to feel special, and this is a great way to show them that you value them as a customer.While posting specific promotions and coupons that are available solely to your followers is a great way to stay in touch with them and make them feel special, you can also use promotions in Facebook ads. This will open up to a wider array of Facebook users, and can result in leads pouring in. This is a great tool to use if you’re going through a slow period of sales and want to ramp up the sales margins.
Announcements, Pricing and New Products/Services
Facebook is the perfect place to announce events, special programs, pricing changes or new products and services. You will reach a large volume of people on Facebook, so it is worth it to you to post important messages such as those. Some may feel like they’re annoying Facebook users by posting a lot on their page, but if they’re following you, they’re waiting for content to be readily available. If you have a special Memorial Day event coming up, it is a good idea to post a weekly update letting people know you are preparing for the big event. Provide details and updates as you get closer to the event, this will get everyone excited and gives you the opportunity to promote to a wide range of people. Don’t overwhelm people by posting more than once a week regarding this specific event, unless the event is that week. Put up a post at the beginning of the week to remind everyone of the event, or that a new product is coming in, and then put up another post that day to help promote the event or product. People love to hear about events and new products, even if they aren’t interested in that particular one at that time. You have to give social media marketing time, as the leads coming through won’t always be successful on each post, ad, or announcement. Social media marketing is a long-term strategy.Testimonials
Testimonials are one of the greatest ways to get engagement on your Facebook page and collect bragging rights. For every satisfied customer, get them to send you a written testimonial that you can then use as a Facebook post. If you can, snap a photo of them with the product (or have them send it in themselves), or even create a video testimonial with yourself and your customers! This is a fantastic way to let future customers know that customer satisfaction is your number one priority. Make the post interesting and intriguing for people to view, and tag your customer in the post so they can start the branching effect out of Facebook’s timeline.Link to Blog Posts or Your Website
A lot of people use Facebook as a type of news outlet. You can get information from numerous news sites directly to one newsfeed without having to hop to each website, or pay costly membership fees. Putting up your own information can add to the benefits for your customers. It is always a good idea to link to outside blogs that you have and your website (and vice versa). It is important to keep all of your websites connected. Facebook is only good for limited content, so your blog allows you to expand on longer stories, product descriptions or usage, industry specific information that relates to your products or services, etc. Not only does it engage users on Facebook with your actual website and everything that you offer, be it promotions, events, products, or tips, but it can help with your website traffic. Creating an organic SEO can take hours to get yourself at the top of Google. If you continuously link your blog posts and website content to your Facebook page, users will engage and continuously head over to your website, inching your website closer and closer to the number one spot.Link to other Content or Media
Linking to outside content or media can be invaluable. If you found a video or article that is relevant to your business or industry that is interesting, why not share it? You might be surprised at the amount of responses you get. What about a new way to use one of your products? People will be ecstatic that you shared a video of a customer tutorial. This is also a great way to share with your Facebook followers that you also have a YouTube channel. Sharing content from other websites and other great businesses that you want to help promote is great, but sharing content from your own social media platforms and/or website is a perfect way to link all of your marketing strategies together. The more value you can add to your page the better your engagement will be. How-to videos, industry-specific regulations, and changes that customers may want to see in the future, etc. Any value added content is good content. Letting Facebook users see something other than your business, or just tips from your view and your products every day can get a bit boring, no matter how much they love your services. Putting in content that is outside of your business, but still linked to your industry, is a great way to add a little bit more engagement with your Facebook page, turning those leads into customers and customers into money.Videos
Videos are great marketing tools for business. News outlets are even turning to posting more videos on their online newspapers, engaging the masses with the type of medium that they prefer. So why not try your hand at making your own marketing videos and getting your name out there? There are some rules to remember, though. Make sure your videos are inspirational and not overly salesy. It is a proven fact that inspirational videos will get a more positive response than sales videos. Humans are emotional creatures, so speaking from the heart will speak more to a person than pitching a sales speech. Next, provide your audience with some educational perspective because most of us like to learn. Create videos that teach us something useful and provide us with valuable information that is engaging. Third, you must be entertaining. Humor will speak to people more than anything else. However, offering a glimpse of behind the scenes footage into how your business runs and about your team can be just as effective. We are curious creatures by nature and like to know who we are working with and buying from. Besides, seeing what your favorite celebrity or your favorite company is doing (besides selling you something) is entertaining. It’s fun to see what the business is doing behind-the-scenes. Give us some information about your business and your team. You will be surprised at the response you get.One advantage of videos is that you can get a lot of engagement right away. Videos on Facebook now automatically play as you scroll past, but are muted, letting people view them quickly to see if they would like to see more. By using a video that engages the user from the start, perhaps by using props or a big opening scene, you can get a much higher engagement. Everyone likes to look at something that looks entertaining and fun, or peaks their interest, so taking the time to really craft your opening scene can play out well for you in the end. You can also try using Featured Videos, uploaded daily, weekly, monthly, whatever works for you and your customer base. People love to tune into the things that only they want to view, and by getting similar content and more information on a topic, you will create great user engagement. Another great way to get more views for Facebook Videos is to try using the call-to-action button on your Facebook page. This button allows you to post a scene, or a specifically designed poster for your video, and will take the user to your desired video platform, be it your YouTube channel or your website.
Although not available to everyone, another great video feature that Facebook is rolling out is Live Video Broadcasting. By using livestream on Facebook you can connect with users by streaming an event, or a webinar/promotion while it’s happening. You can get subscribers to your Live Video Broadcasting, which is a great way to see how many people are interested in your Live Video feeds, gaining more subscribers as the masses join the few. If you’re going to try Live Video Broadcasting, make sure to let the public know that you will be doing a Live Video next week, another post in the beginning of that week, and then put out a post that day reminding followers that they can tune in. You should continue doing these posts even as your subscribers multiply, continuously adding new subscribers to your list and letting other Facebook users know about your video(s). Pro tip: make sure your internet connection is strong. This is not the time to be posting Live Videos from your lake with the touch-and-go service. You don’t want your followers and subscribers thinking that you cannot put out a proper video.
Scripting is key even though this video will be live. You don’t want to go in without knowing at least a little bit of what you’re going to say. Write up a great introduction to your video that those who are just tuning in can read. Make this as intriguing as possible to gain more subscribers, followers, and views. Don’t forget to introduce yourself to your viewers before starting your video, each and every time. No matter how famous you are, it is always courteous to introduce yourself. You can make this simpler as time goes on and as you gain more followers and subscribers.
Many people may start to comment on your video as you are shooting, so take the time to read the comments and answer any questions or concerns that they may have. They may even have great ideas for new videos for you to produce next week. The more often you post, and the longer the video(s), the more possible viewers you may engage with. Make a schedule and take the time to think about what you will be covering in your Live Video Broadcast. Maybe you will be doing a How-To Video or a walk around your office. A great video down the road once you have a few subscribers under your belt is to address your viewers and answer all of their questions, either from previous videos or in real-time from this video. Videos are fun, easy and a great way to gain exposure in social media.
Share Photos
Facebook is a great place to share photos. In fact, as a business it is an ideal location for introducing new products, sharing photos of customers using your products, and even balancing out the advertising with pictures of your business family. Post pictures from a company retreat or event, casual pictures from around the office, pictures of your business at local events, and anything else that adds to the business environment. Your employees are an extension of your brand, so use them when you can.It is also important to post shareable photos. By this I mean post images that people want to share. Make it something that is funny, interesting, valuable, and worth someone’s time. Another great way to get your users to engage in your photos is getting them to post photos of themselves using your products, or any that you have that were submitted by customers. You can urge them to share these photos to their friends and family.
Also, make sure you tag people in your photos whether it is other organizations or individuals. This is another great way to get your photos circulating the Facebook world.
Last, post photos as often as you can. The more you post, the more people will see. It is one of the best ways to engage people and advertise your brand.
Newsletter Signup
Newsletter signups are a fantastic way to generate leads. By asking your followers to sign up for your monthly newsletter, you can collect their email addresses so that you can later send them coupons, news, special promotion information, offers, new product information, etc. These are all items that people are willing to receive in exchange for providing their email address. You can also entice them to sign up by providing an initial offer as well. Newsletters can be a very effective lead generating campaign. Make sure that your newsletter is both informative and entertaining to keep people opening and engaging with your content.Facebook marketing for small business: BUILDING YOUR COMMUNITY
Once you have developed you Facebook page and have begun the process of promoting your page, there are several things you need to do to build your community. First, after you have 25 fans, you can setup your customized URL. Make sure you claim your Facebook URL so that you can start associating it with your business. You can customize your URL to something that fits your business model. For example, use your business name. It needs to be unified with your business model so that all of your websites and social media platforms correlate nicely. This is an easy way to get Google to pick you out of the masses when someone searches for your name. Keeping your URL unique, but similar to your website will link everything together, bringing you closer to the top of the search page.Focus on getting more fans. You do this by promoting your new Facebook page by word of mouth, signage at your business, on your website, flyers, menus, packaging and shopping bags, or even mailings that go out to your current customers. Start inviting your friends to like your page, like related businesses and like industry-specific businesses, like content of other business, invite other businesses to connect, post shareable content as discussed in the previous section, post upcoming events on your page, and start sharing promotions. Remember to focus on the content that you post as discussed previously. Post photos, events, links, quotes and graphics, product descriptions, images of your business, and videos. Don’t forget to tag those who are in the photos. If you hold an event and tag customers and their friends in the uploaded photo, they can share it with their own friends, garnering the branch out effect of Facebook’s timeline. If any of those who are following you or are friends with you are in any photos, or if they are interested in any products and/or services from your company, share your specific post onto their timeline. Their friends will be able to see this, starting that branching out effect again. Start interacting with your customers through polls and questions and be as responsive as you can when they do engage. Schedule your posts on a weekly basis so that you know exactly when and what you are going to post. By posting on a consistent basis you are influencing engagement.
Use Facebook tabs to your advantage by linking to your other social media accounts, create a shop on Facebook (talked about in more detail below), embed a signup form for your newsletter, include fun customizable contests and sweepstakes, and add your business information so that people can ‘check in’ at your business.
TOOLS AND FEATURES OFFERED
Cover Photo
This may seem like a no-brainer for those who regularly use Facebook, and doesn’t look like a big feature for marketing. However, changing your cover photo, as well as your profile picture, every so often can increase engagement with your Facebook company page. If you have a specific logo as your background, that’s a great start. Try changing it up to a team photo, a photo of your shop or warehouse, or a temporary profile picture of one of your featured products. This can let everyone know about the featured product, it will show up on their timeline and will get those who have been quiet to take another look at your Facebook page again.Facebook Insights
Facebook Insights is a tool that Facebook offers to you after you receive 30 fan likes. Page managers are provided with statistics to see what the activity level is like on their page. You are presented with statistics that help you learn more about your audience. You are given general statistics about you page (number of fans, how many new fans you have, if your engagement has increased or decreased, the viewing habits of your viewers, etc.) and then more specific statistics broken down by post.You can see what posts you have made incurred the most engagement including the most likes, comments and shares. You can see how many people your post reached, who clicked on the post, and how many people reacted to it. These can also be broken down by post type: posts, photos, videos, and links.
Insights also lets you know when your followers are actually on Facebook. Insights provides statistical information for creating target audience ads and when to promote those ads.
The information you obtain helps you understand your audience better. The more you understand your audience the better marketing content you can create and promote.
Call-to-Action Button
Facebook’s Call-to-Action button is a way to link your business’s most important objectives on or off Facebook in an easy manner. For example, contacting you is an important function that many customers come to your Facebook page to do. Facebook has made this even easier by making a Contact Us Call-to-Action button. No longer do customers have to hunt and peck for your contact details. A simple click of a button and they can contact you.Facebook offers seven call-to-actions: Book Now, Contact Us, Use App, Play Game, Shop Now, Sign Up and Watch Video.
Book Now can be used to book new appointments directly from your page. Shop Now allows you to create a Facebook shop where customers can shop directly off of Facebook without ever having to leave making getting a sale even easier. Sign Up is an easy way to get followers to sign up for a Newsletter. All of the call-to-action buttons can be used effectively to engage your customers and keep them from leaving your Facebook page. This is a great tool to effectively tie in your outside websites and communicate between all of your web interfaces.
In essence, the buttons are for communicating to your audience, to drive traffic to your other sites or provide an easy way to get your customers to do ‘something’ – perform some action.
Pin Posts to your Timeline
Make sure that you do not forget that you can pin posts to the top of your page. When you pin posts to the top of your page, those posts will be the very first post that followers will see when they visit your page, until you unpin them.Pinning posts is a fantastic marketing technique when you have large events coming up, if you have sale events, promotions or new products/services. For example, let’s say that you have a huge sale event coming up for the Labor Day holiday. You may want to create a nice image that states when the event will be, what the discounts will be, how long it will last, etc. Make it readable, flashy, and shareable so that when you post it followers will want to read it and share it. Plus, when new people visit your page they will not scroll on by it as it will be the very first post on your page.
To pin a post at the top of your page, make the post, load the image, and after it has been saved and posted then click on the downward-facing arrow on the top right-hand corner of the post. From the drop-down menu, select ‘Post to Top’. That post will now stay at the top of your page, until you unpin it. Pinning posts is a wonderful advertising tool to use for any business owner.
Facebook marketing for small business: Facebook Ads
Facebook Ads is unique in the sense that you can reach target audiences. You have the ability to show ads to a specific set of people based on their age, gender, geographic location, interests, and more. This is perfect as you can send out advertising to show up on someone’s newsfeed that would be most likely to buy your product, join your team, or become a future customer. It does not matter what your end goal is, Facebook will help you generate an ad. To start, Facebook asks you to choose your goal based on the following options:- Talk about your Page and posts (Boost your posts)
- Connect with your business on Facebook (Promote your Page)
- Go to your website (Send people to your website)
- Shop or take action on your website (Increase engagement in your app)
- Install or use your app (Get installs of your app)
- Shop in your store (Reach people near your business)
- Invite others to your events (Raise attendance at your event)
- Redeem offers (Get people to claim your offer)
- Get video views *NEW on Facebook
Then you select an image or a set of images to associate with your ad and give your campaign a name. When you are posting photos with your ad set, which is highly recommended, make sure that your photo doesn’t contain 20% or more of text. Facebook will automatically reject your ad, causing you wasted time and money, which can cause frustration within your company, especially if you are hiring someone to make up a specific logo or banner ad. If your logo itself has too much wording, look into making up a specific one just for Facebook ads. This gives you the opportunity to make a simple logo that can be used in smaller ads, or as your Google URL logo as well. Instead of using your photos for all of your call-to-action text, use the headline and description boxes to help bring attention to your ad. These will go above and below your ad image, providing details to your ad.
Last, you will begin selecting your audience. Here is where you can select a location, age range, gender, language, behaviors, etc. allowing you to narrow in on who you want to focus on for a particular ad. If you have a specific audience picked out already, that’s great. You can also upload your e-mail contact list onto Facebook to target audiences that are already your clients, or who are potential clients. This is a great tool to use, bringing more awareness to your business to people who would be more likely to refer you to their friends and family.
If your ad has been running for a while and your budget needs to change, or you see that it isn’t performing that well, you can always go in and edit the lifetime or daily budget (depending on which one you chose) and the end date of your ad. If you want your ad to run for one more day, but want the daily amount to be doubled, simply increase the daily amount and set the end date for 24 hours later. You can always change the exact time an ad will end, which can come in handy. If an ad is set to end before 9:00am the following day, you should push it to at least 10:30am in order to gain more views. People look at their phones and log onto Facebook early in the morning when they first arrive to work and before their day gets busier.
The ad tool also provides you with analytics to help you understand how your ads performed and what you can do to improve your reach and engagement. The best way to increase engagement on your Facebook page, your ads and your overall lead generation, is to use the ‘send people to your website’ option. You can post your photo(s) or video(s) with a description, a call-to-action and watch as the leads roll in. This may not work for every single ad set, and you will have to play around with a few different ideas. Try making an ad set with the same features and targets, but with different wording and photo(s). Then, track your impressions (whether or not anyone liked it, commented, or shared your ad), the money spent and how many clicks to your website were generated. If one ad is performing better than the other, get rid of one ad and continue on. Try making up a few different ads, even if one is working well. You don’t want the same ad running through Facebook newsfeeds for months on end. People will get tired of seeing the same ad and get fed up with you and your company, or they may assume you are making no new developments or products. Instead, switching up which ads you use will help keep users engaged with you, your company and any promotions, products or events you may have going on.
You can use Facebook ads to help promote a certain product, get more people to an event, or just let everyone know a little more about your business and gain exposure. Mixing up the different ads, with one running to gain exposure while another features a certain product, then swapping with an event ad or other great products, will keep people excited to actually see these ads and engage with them.
Remember that there may be a lot of comments on your ads, some good and some bad. Make sure you reply back to these comments and any messages that may come your way to increase engagement with your Facebook page and your overall social media and business appearance. When you’re using social media as a platform for marketing in business, your social media presentation is linked with your business one.
Facebook ads are a very powerful tool to help increase your engagement and revenue stream. You can make ads for anything, be it events, new products, a sale, or your brand in general. Use ads to generate more leads, clicks to your website, views, whatever you had chosen above. Use it to your advantage and use target audiences to effectively market your business.
Campaigns and Contests
Facebook also allows you to run many different campaigns and contests. There are third-party applications that make this even easier with themes and management utilities that help manage winners and the promotion aspect of each contest. You can run contests such as sweepstakes, picture contests, referral promotions, essay contests, photo captions, video contests, music contests, and polling.These contests can be based on an action so that a user must do something in order to get access to your campaign. For example, in order to write a caption for your photo caption contest, they must follow you on Facebook. To enter into a sweepstakes program, users must enter in their email address into a form first, which generates email leads for you. Polling allows you to find out more about your followers. Use this one for fun, but also use it as a way to get to know your audience.
People love to win free stuff and will get involved if there’s the possibility of free product or money on the line. By giving away free product over social media, you will be able to engage with your followers, and other Facebook users, on another level and will get a great amount of e-mails or followers for lead generation. If your goal is to get followers on your Facebook page, set it up so they have to follow you in order to participate. If it’s to simply gain more leads, use the e-mail given to sign them up for a newsletter or send them a friendly e-mail thanking them for signing up for the promotion. There are many different routes and ideas that you can use to make your campaign or contest successful, bringing in both leads and letting you get involved with future customers.
Facebook marketing for small business: Management and Reporting
There are numerous management tools available to help you with scheduling posts. You can set up post queuing that will allow you to have the posts ready as much as a week to a month ahead of time. These can be pure text posts, images, videos, contests, etc. You can also have each post target a set audience. The posts will be set up to post at a specific time of day on a certain day. This is a great feature to use so you can still post information, photos and videos to your Facebook page outside normal office hours. This feature can help make it seem like there’s someone constantly manning your account, updating and posting at all hours of the day, allowing you to save money on hiring someone for weekend and evening shifts to look after your social media account. You can also go into your post and edit if you need to add more information if the information has changed or if you made a mistake.Reporting is also a feature that is extremely useful for businesses. There are analytical tools much like Facebook Insights available that can provide you with valuable information and reports about your user engagement, average response rates, page likes, follower change rates, and comparison tools that provide you with comparison data. You can view information about your competitor’s pages such as what advertising might be working for them, their reach rates, engagement information, etc. You also have the option to see what your ad campaign value is. There are all sorts of reporting and statistics available; it is up to you to choice what is best for you. Do your research and find out what tools are best for you.
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