It’s hard enough to manage a busy Facebook page, along with the other marketing tasks pulling you in a million different directions. Add to that Facebook’s ever-changing landscape and features, and Facebook marketing becomes quite the challenge. To help you out with your Facebook marketing strategies, I’ve done some research and found three simple steps that will have you building brand loyalty and driving revenues in no time.
1. Observe what others are doing.
Take notes on companies similar to yours and competitors and big brands you admire. Visit other business pages, and pay special attention to the following:
- How often are they posting, and at what times?
- What types of content are they posting, and what is getting the most interaction? (photos, videos, questions, etc.)
- How many people are interacting with the page? (Liking, commenting, etc.)
- Does the page have a Welcome tab or any other custom tabs?
- What is not working for the page, and what could you do better?
Your mission is to take plenty of notes from a week or two’s observations of the pages you’ve chosen to study. Look for similarities across the pages, and watch for patterns to emerge. These patterns are your guide for what to do with your own Facebook page. Copy what is working for others, and adapt the successful techniques to your own page.
2. Learn best practices that deliver results.
As with any other form of marketing, there are rules of thumb that work well on Facebook. Some of these best practices will be gleaned from your observations, and others are well-known tactics that get results for most businesses.
- Post daily: As people make more friends and Like more pages on Facebook, you’ll want to be sure your posts aren’t missed. Stay on your community’s radar with regular interaction.
- Be engaging: This simple tip can never be repeated enough. Your goal is to connect and get a response from your community, so ask questions, post helpful information, and link to interesting content that people will want to Like and Share.
- Include a call to action: Ask people to Share, Like or comment on your posts, or send them to your website to watch a video.
- Use the 80/20 rule: Be sure your content isn’t a never-ending sales pitch, but do include product or service information from time to time. The 80/20 rule is a good guideline to follow for connection content vs. sales pitch posts.
- Have fun: Let your brand shine through, and remember that Facebook is a social place, so have a little fun with your community.
3. Create an editorial calendar to schedule your Facebook posts.
A calendar will help you plan your content and integrate it with other marketing strategies. It provides a roadmap to be sure you’re covering all the topics you want to cover, and it helps you balance the types of content you’re posting.
You should create two types of calendars: one as a larger roadmap of promotions and events to highlight over the year and a weekly calendar to give structure to your daily content. The weekly calendar could look like this:
Monday morning: Photo from an event/photo of a product
Monday afternoon: Poll about your products/industry topic
Tuesday morning: Third-party link to an interesting article
Tuesday afternoon: Question about news event/crowdsourcing question/social question
Wednesday: Your newest blog post
And so on….
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Try these three simple steps for improving your Facebook marketing strategies, and let us know how they worked for you. Do you have any other tips to share with our community?
Image courtesy of creative design agency Arrae
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