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Marketing your company on Facebook isn’t optional anymore – it’s something your customers expect. Beyond that, it can be a no- to low-cost way to boost your brand awareness, and an effective one at that. Worldwide, there are over 1.86 billion monthly active Facebook users, a number that increases 17 percent each year.
But simply registering an account and posting intermittently isn’t enough. If you want to build a strong following on Facebook, you need a strategy, and you need to take specific steps to reach your goals.
Here are some ways to take your page to the next level.
1. Use words and images
Posting a short sentence about a new product or a sale won’t get you traction online. To grab your followers’ attention, you need to post high-quality images that highlight your merchandise and entice customers to buy. Content with compelling images results in 94 percent more total views on average than content without images.
Include a call to action like “shop today” and, for extra motivation, tell followers that the items are going fast or that the sale ends today.
2. Post current, original content
Once you lose the interest of your followers, it can be hard to gain it back. So, if you share the same viral video or infographic that they’ve already seen all over their feed, it’s going to compromise your credibility. That’s why it’s so important to only post timely, engaging content.
If possible, it’s preferable to post fewer pieces of high-quality content that you produced than it is to fill up your page with photos, videos, and information you got elsewhere.
3. Create exclusive offers for followers
When you’re competing with all the other brands vying for your followers’ attention on Facebook, you have to prove your worth to them. And one of the best ways to do that is to offer special discount codes and items that you only publicize on Facebook. It’s a great way to make your followers feel like insiders and thank them for their loyalty.
4. Time posts strategically
It’s not just what kind of content you post but also when you post it. There are a lot of studies that claim to have found the perfect time to post content on Facebook (or Twitter, or Instagram). The problem is that all of them claim something a little different.
It’s hard to nail down the best days and times to post on a social network because so much of it depends on the audience of a brand’s page and it is very dependent on the current version of the Facebook algorithm.
So, you should analyze your own posts to look for the best days and times to post. Analyze your content based on two metrics: views/impressions and engagement (clicks, likes, shares, comments). Remember to account for time zones if your followers are spread out across the world.
Once you have the days and times that your posts either get a lot of views or a lot of engagement, you can better plan when to publish based on your goals.
5. Boost selected posts
One of the best things about Facebook is that it’s free, but, like most things in business, it works even better when you put a little money behind it. Facebook for Business allows you to “boost” your posts with ad spends that target users by age, location, interests, and more.
To boost, you just choose the post you want to highlight and then select the audience, the amount you want to spend, and the duration of the campaign. If you need help with this, check out the Facebook Help Center.
6. Test and adjust
Once you devise a Facebook strategy, commit to changing it. That is, pay attention to what kind of posts get traction, and what falls flat. Facebook is always changing, so keep up on new features and take advantage of items like the call to action button (try “Shop Now”) on the header page.
What works for one brand might not work for yours, so check your metrics and keep experimenting until you get a feel for when your audience engages and what types of posts resonate with them.
