Facebook Best Practices
Facebook for Business Best Practices
Sure, you may have a Facebook page for your business, but are you doing it right? Here we spotlight just a handful of best practices that you can plug and play right now to improve how your Facebook page is engaging your customers and building your brand.
Think Engage. Not Sell.
You know when someone is just interested in trying to sell you something, and when they are just interested in you. The same holds true for your fans. Resist the temptation to overtly sell to them. Think of them more like one of your friends and how you want to let them in on a special deal but you wouldn’t blatantly say “Buy this for $19.99.”
Post Daily
Think of it this way, if most people check their Facebook newsfeed every 3 days or so, then if you post only a couple times a week, your posts could get missed completely. By posting every day, you keep a nice consistent presence without being overwhelming. Once you’ve had a chance to see how much you’re engaging your fans, try adjusting how often you post to see what is well-received. After all, every brand and audience is different – find out what works best for you.
Design Your Posts to Engage
With every post, imagine how you would like your fans to respond, do you want them to like it, share it, respond to a poll, fill in a blank, click a link? As always, begin with the end in mind and it will help you craft the right message. Be sure to include that call to action within the first 90 characters of your post so they know right away how to respond.
Have a Voice
All of your social media should have a tone and quality to your content that supports your overall branding and positioning in the marketplace. Your voice should resonate with your audience in a way that shows you’re an authority on your products and within your industry and more than anything it should show that you understand your audience and connect with them. Be sure to include keywords that are unique to your brand identity within your posts as well.
Be Visual
The more you post photos and videos, the better. People are visual and posts with photos that include a photo album, a picture or a video generate about 180%, 120% and 100% more engagement than the average post, respectively. Another Facebook study shows that top performing ads featured close-up images and single color that stands out.
Show Them the Value
Give fans something for their Like and devotion. Access to exclusive content, sneak peeks at new products, a special invitation to an event or Fan-only sweepstakes are all ideal ways to show them how it’s worth their while to be a fan and keep up the following.
Leverage Your Partnerships
Have a co-op relationship with a manufacturer or vendor? It’s likely that they have their own following on Facebook. Strike up a deal to tag each other’s pages in a post. There are many opportunities to cross-promote to each other’s fan bases. After all, isn’t that kind of social sharing what Facebook is all about?!
Watch the Numbers
Pay attention to Facebook’s nifty Insights tool. They do a good chunk of the analytics for you. This is your first stop to understanding who your fans are, where they live and how far your reach travels. Warning, once you start paying attention to Insights it’s easy to become a little obsessive about watching the numbers. Don’t say we didn’t warn you!
These are just a few of the best practices that bubble to the surface when it comes to Facebook. There are plenty more and as you build your own fan base and followers, you will come to learn that your own brand will learn its very own best practices unique to you. Of course, if you need help getting your Facebook page off the ground, the experts at Customer Insight Group are happy to set you on the right path.
Filed under: Social Media Marketing