When it comes to marketing, Facebook is here to stay. It’s one of the main marketing tools that today’s startups, small businesses and even enterprise companies are using. In fact, 84 percent of business to business (B2B) marketers use social media to market and one of the most (if not the most) popular channel is Facebook.
Today, 42 percent of marketers believe Facebook is absolutely critical to their businesses. That number is up 75 percent from just two years ago. While the retail industry is actually the one that tends to drive the most revenue from Facebook, that’s not to say that companies in other industries can’t too. Below are seven tips to help you with your marketing strategy using Facebook.
1. Avoid Auto Posting
Posting automatically to Facebook is never a good idea. You can see this trend with many businesses that sync their Twitter and Facebook accounts. You can watch exactly the same posts go up to both at exactly the same time. Some even say “posted from Twitter” right on the Facebook post. This is an incredibly fast way to decrease your engagement and diminish your following.
Another common form of auto-posting is when an article or blog post is published and companies have it set to post directly to Facebook. These usually come along with some generic language, having pulled directly from the title and description of a post without a second thought. Auto posting causes a 70 percent decrease in comments and likes on Facebook. So just take the extra time to create unique posts for your Facebook feed instead of auto posting.
2. Devote Time to Your Campaigns
Facebook has become key to many brands’ marketing campaigns. That means that it deserves your time and attention. When social media first became big, it wasn’t big with businesses. It was sort of glazed over as something that marketers needed to check off their to-do lists and wasn’t really utilized until more recent years. Now, the importance of it is clear, yet some companies still glaze over it, throwing up a post now and then, but not really bothering to put much time or thought into it.
3. Focus on Images
Images have some serious share potential and the great thing about sharing on Facebook is that it is more likely to have a viral effect. That’s why, for many brands, photos are the way to go for maximum impact on the social front. That said, it’s always important to keep a close eye on the type of image you choose. Experiment a bit and you’ll quickly get a feel for the type of images your fans prefer. Stick with those!
4. Leverage Your Site’s Traffic
Don’t just think of Facebook as a way to bring in new customers. Remember that it’s also a way to engage with the ones you already have. Facebook is a great customer retention tool because it allows your brand the freedom to have a little more personality, not to mention to communicate directly with your customers. So, go ahead and throw up a Facebook like button directly on your website.
5. Give Your Posts Some Personality
Posting dry content with boring statuses on Facebook isn’t going to get you anywhere. Facebook posts usually come with a bit of a punch. Experiment a bit to find your own brand’s Facebook personality, but just keep in mind that it can differ quite a bit from the typical tone on your company’s site. Popular Facebook “personalities” range across the map, including:
• Cute
• Sassy
• Funny
• Sarcastic
• Punny
6. Schedule Your Facebook Posts
Just because you don’t want to auto-post, doesn’t mean you can’t schedule them to go out ahead of time. It simply isn’t efficient to have to sit down and post every time you want a post to go live, especially for companies posting dozens of times each day. Luckily, Facebook has a handy scheduling tool that solves this problem.
You can simply enter a post (this works for photos, videos, anything else that you may be posting as well) and click the clock icon in the bottom left of the post. You can schedule far in advance and even go back to review which posts you have scheduled, just to make sure you have them set correctly. It’s a fairly intuitive tool, but in case you wanted to read up on a step-by-step, Facebook lays it all out for you.
7. Measure Your Success
Measure how you’re measuring up on social media, especially Facebook. Facebook offers the incredibly helpful Facebook Insights tool that lets you track everything from how far your posts reach to which demographics make up your Facebook fan base. It’s important to keep an eye on how you’re doing because it will tell you which posts do better than others, both in terms of content and even post type (photo vs. video vs. status vs. link, etc.).
Your success on Facebook can give you some good insight into trends and favorites that your audience as a whole prefers and even help you strategize new marketing efforts outside of social media. Fifty-three percent of social media marketers don’t track their progress at all. Don’t be one of them.
Conclusion
It’s not a secret that companies struggle to generate leads directly from Facebook. Many get frustrated when they don’t see a direct cash flow coming in from the social platform. But this is no reason to worry. While it’s great to drive a little revenue directly from Facebook, let’s not let ourselves be fooled into believing that that’s all it’s about.
Facebook, like all forms of social media, is about engaging in a conversation and enhancing brand recognition. Someone may not become your immediate customer, but they may be more likely to buy your products or services in the future simply because they like what you do on Facebook. Therefore, you should measure your success on Facebook more from numbers around your reach, following and engagement instead of how many leads you generated.
If you have any questions, our team would be more than happy to help. Call us today at 215-393-9787.
