Social media is an essential part of a business’s digital strategy. It’s a place where customers can interact with your brand, read updates, and learn more about what you do. According to a recent article by Hootsuite, a leading social media platform company, 90 million small businesses use Facebook. With this being the case, it is undeniable that Facebook has become an important tool for small businesses. If you’re wondering how to stand out and convert customers from virtual visitors to real-life ones, we have some answers. Here are five tips for using Facebook for marketing your business.
1. Ensure your branding and information is consistent
How do you establish credibility between your business and potential customers? A great place to start is by making sure your branding is consistent. After visiting your website, Facebook users should be able to recognize your page by your branding in seconds by its images, colors, and fonts. Since Facebook is a third-party platform, it’s important to make sure that it serves as an extension of your brand; this starts with visual cohesiveness. It will avoid confusion and create an instant association with your company.
Along these same lines, ensure all of your important information about the business is both present and correct. This includes the address of the store, phone number, support email address, website, and even your business’s other social media platforms.
2. Set Goals for the Platform
When setting up or revamping a social media presence for your business, it’s important to define, outline, and discover what your specific goals are and what success and improvement look like under your own system of metrics. Goals can encompass any number of things, from raising local and out-of-state brand awareness to driving community engagement.
The key here is to make sure that these goals are SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound). As you get comfortable reaching your goals, it’s time to evolve and pick larger goals.
3. Know When To Use Each Type of Post
One strength of using Facebook as a marketing tool is that it allows for different post types to support your message. Knowing the most effective times and methods for using each post type comes with practice and seeing what your audience enjoys. Here are a few ideas of posts to try:
Text Post
A text post is exactly what it sounds like: a Facebook post with text and no visuals. These can be useful for updates in the event that a certain service has to change for the day or to get the word out about a new feature on your website. Since text posts rely only on words to convey a message, it is important to craft your sentences with care and detail to ensure you are getting the message that you want to your audience.
Picture or Video Post
People love images. In fact, they tend to prefer looking at pictures or watching videos over reading longer bodies of text. To mix up the type of posts on your feed and increase engagement, try using pictures to tell stories. As for video, you don’t have to have high-end equipment in order to create quality content. Many businesses these days are using smartphones for their creations. Others use video software like Adobe and Renderforest to build videos without ever turning a camera on. Don’t be afraid to get creative. Make sure the sound is clear and loud, and keep the lighting natural as possible. The more you post, the easier it becomes. Starting and staying consistent is the hard part.
Link Post
A link post is when you use a Facebook post as a means for linking to content. This can be useful when you want to promote a blog post on your business’s website by talking about it on Facebook. Overall, this is a useful post type to use to increase engagement on your social media, as well as your actual website. The key here is to not go overboard. Posting several links every day may look like spam to users. Many social media experts advise businesses to follow the 80/20 rule of social media: 80% of content should be devoted to entertaining your audience and sharing others’ content, and 20% should directly promote your business. However, in time you will find what balance works best for your own social media strategy.
4. Know Your Audience and Engage Accordingly
The best way to get traffic on your page and increase engagement is by knowing who is looking at your content and what the best mix of means to reach them are. Don’t be afraid to ask your loyal customers what it is that sparks their interest on social media. Create buyer personas in order to get to know your audience. You can use polls on Facebook or post questions on your stories to ask what users want to see.
Aside from asking directly, you can also use the analytics features built into your Facebook business page to see what types of posts are getting the most likes. Capitalize on those types of posts, while always paying attention to what users are telling you directly.
5. Have an Advertisement Strategy
One great feature that Facebook has for businesses is the ability to create and use ads, as well as boosting individual posts to increase engagement and put eyes on your content. There are several easy-to-use tools involved when creating an advertisement, as well as robust tools for determining who you want to target and where you want to target for your advertising. It is certainly worth taking a look at, as it can help boost pageviews, increase credibility, and simply help get the word out about products and services. Boosting in particular can be very cheap and good for one-off trials when testing strategies to prepare for a larger advertising campaign.
Facebook is an undeniably useful tool in any social media strategy, particularly when growing awareness and getting to know customers. Do you have a long-term strategy for your social media platforms? Get in touch with us today to check in with your strategy and turn your ideas into long term growth.