Facebook: the great big social media monster. There’s profiles, likes, shares, videos and more. Somehow people are using Facebook to better their business. But how?
Businesses across the planet are making a name for themselves not by awesome sidewalk sales or crazy in-person giveaways. They’re doing it by leveraging social media. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Snapchat, LinkedIn – the list goes on and on with new updates every day. However, Facebook has established itself as the one of the biggest and most effective tools thus far. With thousands of news updates, social profiles, and shared content pieces each minute, you simply can’t afford to not be a part of it.
What Exactly is Facebook?
Facebook is a major headliner of discussion nowadays. And for good reason.
As one of the top 10 biggest sites and services on the Internet, Facebook has quite the digital empire. According to Hubspot, Facebook captures 10% of all internet visits. Moreover, those visitors spend an average of 28 minutes on the site. Those are big numbers, considering how short online attention spans have become.
As an online hub of sharing, commenting, and posting, Facebook is a cross between an online chat forum, a search engine, and a news outlet. It’s seemingly endless degree of functionality makes Facebook a realm of uncharted possibility. For businesses, this means it is another place where your reputation exists. The opportunity lies in what business owners and executive teams choose to do about it.
How Businesses Are Using Facebook.
Facebook as a marketing channel for your brand can be a great thing. It gives you a unique opportunity to interact with customers and other brands as if your brand was a person. This humanizing quality alone is tremendous in breaking down the barriers of communication between company and consumer.
The following are some tactics that companies are using to attract and engage their audiences:
As a Community Hub
Companies big and small are using their Facebook pages as the starting block for connecting with their online community. Take Rook Coffee (NJ) for example. They use their page to showcase their fun work environment, spur awareness for a new store launch, and get the word out for their own community events (like tastings and a 5K race!)
Sift through and get a better feel for what your customers look like, are interested in, and are driven by. Give them the opportunity to dole out suggestions and feedback. Then take that feedback, put it into action, and broadcast this back to the community. The biggest thing you want to accomplish when trying to grow your community is an established empathy for your customers’ needs.
To Share Insights
What better way to show your smarts & expertise than through social media? People love being in the know, learning behind-the-scenes info, and getting a trusted source’s expert opinion. Fill that desire and answer some FAQs, concerns, and timely advice with your online community.
Express it succinctly, and with video or photos and you will have something sincerely share-worthy.
Promotions
When it comes to event promotion, social media has taken center stage. Facebook allows for the best possible customization of online event and promotion listings. There’s plenty of room for creativity when it comes to advertising your upcoming promotion. It all comes down to growing your community first.
Use your promotions as a way to reward those loyal followers, and get in the habit of offering more promotions via social media. This way customers will be incentivized to not only check in frequently to your Business Page, but will also associate your Facebook Page as the definitive source for the best promotions on your services and products.
Contests
People love winning free things. The bigger the prize, the better!
Engage with your customerbase’ creative and competive spirits with a uniquely-engineered contest that blends both elements. Intertwine a service discount or giveaway that’s compelling, make it as easy as possible for participants to get involved, and don’t forget to collect some information (that’s the whole point!)
How Your Business Can Leverage Facebook.
Marketing used to be centered on “I speak, you listen.” Now, the focus has shifted to an even keel: businesses provide insights, experiences, and services while customers provide feedback, critiques and recommendations to their circles of influence.
Your business needs to start taking part in the online conversation; about your industry news, updates, and most importantly, your actual company.
To do that, your business needs to set up a company page (or optimize the existing one.) Here’s how to get it started:
- Set up your Facebook Page (Restaurants and storefront businesses should select “Local Business or Place,” while others should select “Company, Organization, or Institution”)
- Make sure all main information is up to date.
- Upload your company’s branded graphics for Profile picture & Cover photo.
- Claim your vanity URL (so it looks better when being shared.)
- Link your other social media accounts to your Company Page.
- Create a social media marketing strategy, in line with your overall outbound marketing strategy, of when and what to publish to your Company Page.
The success or failure of your efforts on Facebook will rest almost exclusively on your ability to create high-caliber content. While oftentimes such efforts can be hard, it is certainly worth partnering with an outside agency or firm to help execute a winning social media strategy.
Once you are consistently executing your social media strategy, it’s time to consider setting up a paid Facebook advertising campaign. Facebook’s Ad Manager works much like that of Google AdWords, allowing advertisers to target users by age, demographic, location, interests, preferences, and similar criteria. The ads appear both in the main news feed and side panel of users’ news feed.
While it can be costly, Facebook’s user data and Ads Manager system offer one of the most customizable and effective advertising tools currently available to the market. If it’s within your budget, there are few better ways to drive traffic and awareness for your brand.
Upping the Ante.
Reputation still rests at the center. Winning customers remains the goal. But now the tactics have shifted. Businesses that are making a killing from their successful social media campaigns blend real-world conversations with digital world content.
Once customers know that your Facebook Page is worth their precious time, you have their attention. It remains your job to continually speak in the language of social media while maintaining your brand’s voice. Posting short motivational quips and quotes is great for filling space, but don’t mistake that for effective content marketing. You want to engage with customers in a more meaningful way. Some things to consider:
- Video works spectacularly well, especially now that Facebook’s mobile version makes autoplay almost instantaneous when you scroll through your feed. A short video series filmed every week could work wonders for getting a better reaction from fans.
- Blog articles are still an excellent way to grow traffic to the hub of your insights. The more timely and relevant your content is, the better of a chance it stands at being shared amongst viewers.
- Take it from someone who has already succeeded – there’s plenty of Unique ways to use Facebook for your business (via SocialMediaExaminer.com).
When you commit to being a social business, customers take note. It positions your company amongst the ranks of the most innovative and considerate businesses.
What to Watch Out For.
Every marketing tactic is not without its share of pitfalls. Here are some of the most prominent for Facebook:
Consumer-Centric Industries (Entertainment & Food) Perform The Best
While there are a great many benefits to be had for a strong social media following and presence, a company Facebook Page is an outlet that favors the bold (and the repeatedly bold.) Unsurprisingly, those accounts centered on leisure-time activities usually fare the best.
It’s Rented, Not Owned Real Estate:
Facebook has a funny way of changing. Although it’s free to sign up and participate, the organic reach of posts has seen a major setback in the last year. A paid ad campaign, or some serious hustle in the real world marketing,
Of course mega-brands like Coca-Cola, McDonald’s and the like are going to be able to maintain and add to their multi-million fan community. They’ve had established brands for years, and have the bankroll needed to make any potential change to the Facebook platform a mere blip in the radar.
However, the rest of the business community routinely gets roasted by the big changes Facebook sometimes makes, under the guise of “bettering the user experience.”
To stay in the know with updates to Facebook, check out these resources:
- All Facebook (The Unofficial Facebook Blog): http://allfacebook.com
- Facebook’s Newsroom: http://newsroom.fb.com
- Facebook for Business – News section: https://www.facebook.com/business/news
- Facebook’s Privacy Page: https://www.facebook.com/fbprivacy
Go Forth and Conquer.
A certain degree of trial and error is necessary to truly win at Facebook and social media marketing in general. Make a point to get started, and continually engage with your fans. They’re the ones who allow you to have a business, so go the extra mile and try to do something special for them via social media.
This article was originally posted on the Graphic D-Signs blog.
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