Using Facebook for Business: Few Tips to Succeed
You own a business – you must have a section on social media marketing in your business plan. Your business must be on Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr – maybe more. There were 3.48 billion active users on different social media networks as of date. So, you are reaching out to increase brand awareness and establish yourself as a thought leader if you use the right pieces of thought.
Facebook is amongst the largest social media platforms, and it is beyond doubt that it needs to feature in your business plans, positively. Having said that, what plans should you have for Facebook? We all know that Facebook is a cost-effective way to reach to a broad segment of prospects cutting across all ages and demographics. It allows both-side communication, and you can receive suggestions from your prospects and customers on improving your customers. It offers a level playing field. Your competitors are reaping the same benefits. How will you be different from them in your approach? In this blog, we will discuss a few techniques that you need to imbibe in your digital marketing strategy to have effective RoI by investing resources across social media platforms and Facebook in particular.
Have a robust Facebook strategy
Before jumping onto the Facebook craze, you need to ask yourself why you should be on Facebook. First, figure out whether your target market is active on Facebook. Next, you need to finalise what your goals should be.
Do you want to enhance brand awareness?
Do you wish to increase your reach?
Do you want to generate visitors for your website?
Do you wish to sign up customers for your business?
Do finalise your goals and accordingly strategise how you can achieve those goals. For example, if you wish to increase brand awareness, you need to do a specific set of activities that are different from those that you do to generate visitors for your website or increase customers signing into your portfolio of services. Incorporate your Facebook marketing strategies in the broader social media marketing strategy.
Understand the Facebook algorithm
Facebook has an underlying algorithm that decides which posts to appear in your followers’ newsfeeds. Facebook considers your activities while you are active on the platform. Accordingly, only the related content is shown on the newsfeed. The four factors that Facebook takes into consideration to determine content ranking are:
The inventory of stories and feeds that are available;
Signals that can inform Facebook about the relevance of a post to its target audience;
The prediction that a user will react positively to a post;
Allocate a relevance score to each story.
So, how do you outsmart this? To start with, you need to stop using bait to improve engagement. You can instead start by driving discussions or tactfully requesting users to respond to subtle questions. Don't be controversial and avoid such topics. Employee advocacy also helps. It often leads to a multiplier effect. You can introduce employee programmes to improve Facebook engagement.
Humanising your Facebook page works wonders
You cannot have a boring Facebook business page and expect your fan base to grow. Remember, you are communicating with other users who prefer to communicate with people – and not businesses. To start with, you need to set the tone for the conversation. Do keep in mind that the tone should gel with the brand image.
You need to reply to all comments – good or bad. Use these opportunities to show to your members that you care and offer an ear to their comments. They should have a feeling that they are heard.
Create Facebook Groups and entice the target market to join these groups. Initiate meaningful discussions in these groups to keep members engaged. Ask questions; ask for feedback or even start a contest to keep your group members engaged.
Create high-value content to entice your fans
Your content should cover in detail the theme of each post and its frequency. It serves for your business if you post relevant content regularly. Undertake periodic research to have an overview of the type of posts help, posting time, post length, etc. You can test out all varieties of posts – be it pictures, infographics, podcasts, videos, etc.
Visuals improve the aesthetics of social media posts and draw more engagement than those without visuals. Of late, videos have gone a long way in bringing eyeballs to your Facebook business page. Again, the content remains critical. You need to entice the viewer to view the entire video and receive your message. The better the content – the more are the likes, comments and shares. More are the chances for the post to go viral!
As Facebook prioritises content that engages more, the optimised time for posts gains importance. You need to research to understand which the best time for your posts are and for what type of posts.
Facebook as an ad platform
Facebook allows you to reach out to your target market through demographics based targeted ads. You can target users based on user-defined criteria; viz. demographics, geographic location, interests, behaviour, and connections. While ad spends are relatively low, Facebook also allows you to control your ad budget. Now, you can reach out to your target market through another cost-effective medium that can drive prospects to undertake a call-to-action of your choice.
Facebook Analytics helps you make informed decisions
Facebook has in-built analytics features that are probably second only to Google. It helps to understand which posts are gaining more engagement vis-à-vis other posts. Facebook Analytics allows you to drill down and gain further insights about customer behaviour that goes a long way to update your social media policy. You can now optimise the customer journey and drive more business! You can also utilise the social media analytics tools like Sprout Social, BuzzSumo, Awario, or Snaplytics to help you in finalising KPIs and tracking them.
Conclusion
Compared to other social media platforms, Facebook scores over the rest. However, it depends on your type of business. Most B2B solutions prefer other social media platforms on Facebook. Still, Facebook remains firmly in business strategies across all products. You must already have been working on your Facebook business page and may have already working on these tips mentioned above. You need to humanise your content. Work on the hashtags also. Do some research and ensure your posts are also tagged to the happening hashtags in the industry.
Facebook marketing is about connecting and having fun. So, have fun with your customers and see your business grow.