With over 2.6 m of Ireland’s population on the Social network Facebook according to statistica.com, it is no secret that the platform is the place to go if you’re looking to reach a large audience. As opposed to one’s personal profile on Facebook, I believe it to be essential for businesses to plan and strategize when adopting a social media approach to connect with its customers. After all;
“A vision without a strategy remains an illusion” – Lee Bolman
Now whether you’re seeing poor ROI on your time spent posting on Facebook or if you are simply looking to reach out to a larger number of people, here are five tips you should consider to improve your businesses Facebook page.
- Visuals! Visuals!
As marketing consultant Roy H Williams once quoted; “A visual image is a simple thing, a picture that enters the eyes”. A company without a logo is a company without an identity, therefore the profile picture should be a recognisable one. The cover photos display at 820x312p on a computer and 640x360p on a smartphone (https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/how-to-create-facebook-business-page-ht) and should communicate the first initial message of what your brand is about – be it your mission statement, tagline or a more tangible image. The inclusion of photo, video and colour are also key visuals. All visuals should look both professional and relative.
Content Creation
Your content must be visually appealing.
It must entice the user to look at it.
It must also encourage engagement. The aim of having an online presence on social media should not be to solely promote but to socialise. The idea of building a community, a relationship
between your brand and the people who follow it. Articles, staff interviews, behind the scene content and funny pieces should invite socialization between you the brand and your
customers.
The better the content, the more engaging it will be.
Community Engagement
Encouraged by content creation,
engagement includes the public likes, shares and comments for an online businesses’ social media efforts. Unless you engage with your
community, you are not going to know how they feel about you or what they want from you.
Show behind the scenes footage, ask questions, share your fan’s content run competitions, host live videos and be you! Have fun and be social. Afterall it is called social media.
Engagement in communication is also important. If replying to public comments – always address that user by their first name and always remain positive.
For private (i.e. Facebook Messenger) enquiries, reply time is of importance, “Typically replies instantly” is a must have especially if you provide a service such as a food or hairdressing.
Plan = Action
With almost half the countries population on Facebook, I feel my emphasis on strategy to be justified. With so many different brands fighting for attention, you are going need to plan your social media activity. What are you posting, when are you posting it? Why and are you posting it? It is said that early afternoon hours are the best time (https://buffer.com/best-time-to-post-on-facebook) but thanks to Facebook’s algorithm, time is no longer a major considerate.
Take Advantage of the Tech
Lastly, don’t make your business a private
page on Facebook otherwise you are essentially locking yourself in a room and throwing away the keys. By making your public page a business, you will gain access to Facebooks, stats, analytics and even ads. Use hashtags to create trends and encourage engagement from the community. Enable location settings if your brand is established in several countries. Having several public Facebook pages for different regions can become both clustered and downright messy. Use Facebook Ads often and update your pinned post as regularly as possible. Call to Action buttons should be focused on providing information (i.e. a video) as opposed to making a sale. Monitoring and analysing community engagement is key. Here you can gain an approximate measurement on ROI and make any changes you see fit to your plan.
These five tips are for sure going to help you get more out of your Facebook page. If used cleverly, they should lead to a boost in engagement, likes, interest and eventually sales.
Happy Facebooking!
Jack Tells All 