An online presence is critical to meet customer expectations. The only effective way to be seen and heard is to have both a website and social media. Your target audience members will be searching you up across multiple platforms, therefore being present on those platforms is important. If you learn and integrate the right social media techniques, you will directly increase your reach and profits exponentially. It’s this marketing that will transform your business into a long-standing, successful business.
Facebook is the cost-effective platform you should opt for if your budget can’t stretch enough to use both Facebook and Instagram. However, if you go into it blind, you will lose time and money in uncharted territory utilizing techniques that don’t actually work. This article covers the top Facebook tips you need to know in order to have a thriving business page.
Facebook Branding
In the same way you’d have the same tone across all your advertising and website, your Facebook business page’s branding should mirror that of exterior branding, as well as be consistent throughout the page. This includes phrasing, tone of voice, colors and imagery. The benefits of having a set branding universally is the fact consumers know what to expect, building brand loyalty.
There can be challenges with branding, but only if your team members aren’t across everything nor have an understanding of the mission and elements within. Utilize techniques by introducing branding documents and meetings that enforce a correct understanding. If you do rebrand, it’s critical you mirror this on your Facebook page.
Facebook Posting
In order to maintain and grow a following which can convert into sales, you need to be consistent with posting. The most time-effective technique is to create content calendars at least a month in advance and then utilize the schedule tool to schedule the posts all at once before the beginning of the month. Creating a content calendar is as easy as forming a table on Word which includes three rows with dates, images and captions in each row. The typical peak time to schedule is 7pm due to the majority of people having finished work and eaten dinner.
You can efficiently fill in content calendars fast by referring back to a premade PowerPoint template describing the types of posts you want to include every month. Resave existing content calendars and simply replace each post with ideas from the PowerPoint.
Facebook Ads
Facebook Ads is a low-cost, effective technique to reach your target audience, as well as increase your business exposure and brand awareness. These ads will reach more people than standard posts, bringing in long-standing customers.
A benefit of Facebook is that you can easily schedule a month’s worth of Facebook Ads and posts as ad sets on Facebook Ads Manager in as little as 45 minutes. Ad sets essentially mean that the ad will also appear on your Facebook page as a post, except with spend behind it, combining the engagement of both your existing audience and a new audience to accelerate reach.
Through Facebook Ad Manager, you can create one or multiple set audiences and simply target these audience members each time you post. Strategically picking location, ages, gender and interests, or clicking lookalike audiences, you can reach the right people at the right time.
Invite people to like your page
Dedicate a small amount of time at least once a week to go through your post reacts and invite people to like your page. There will often be reacts by users who don’t already like your page and the amount of this type of engagement will depend on how much your existing following has engaged with the post. For instance, if a user reacts to your post, it may appear on the feed of some of their friends and they may interact with the post. If a user shares your post, it will increase the chances of appearing on their feeds even more.
Simply click into the reacts and for those who haven’t liked your page, there will be an “invite” button next to their name.
An additional benefit to utilizing ad sets on Facebook Ads Manager is that they appear as both a post on your page and are advertised to new audiences. This means when the new audiences engage with the ad by clicking a react, you then have the ability to go to the post on your page and sift through, inviting large amounts of people to like. These invites then appear in users’ notifications and they quite often click accept.
All in all, you can lose out on hundreds of followers by not undertaking this simple step. Start implementing it and you will see your followers and credibility increase significantly.
Giveaways
With years of experience in social media marketing, it became clear giveaways are the top most popular posts, bringing in a higher engagement. It’s no wonder this is the case as users are given an incentive to interact – a prize. The mechanics for giveaways should always be for users to tag a friend and like the business page. You can also add the option to share for an extra number of entries. And remember, a lot of people will forget to click like so ensure you go through the interactions and invite them.
Giveaways are a low cost effective marketing technique as they can include a small prize worth as little as $10. If you have the budget, you can also gain an exponential number of followers with a giveaway valued at hundreds or thousands of dollars. Make sure you do the giveaway over a long period of time so you can promote it multiple times through stories and posts and allow more people to mention friends.
When it come to the date to pick a winner, there are many free “random comment pickers” available online. This automates fairly picking a winner with you only needing to paste the link URL.
Now that we have gone over Facebook marketing tips you need to incorporate to gain a following, it’s important to note consistency is key. Increasing engagement will boost your following which then additionally increases your engagement even further. It’s a circle effect. While it’s expected by consumers to have a Facebook page for your business, an exceptional Facebook page that markets your business correctly will directly generate leads for your business.
