How to Master Facebook for Small Business
When it comes to social media you don’t get more gargantuan than Facebook.
Just over a quarter of the earth’s population use the behemoth platform every month – just take a minute to digest that!
A while back there was talk of Facebook not working for businesses, especially if you were B2B. Most people have now come to realise that it’s not the platform that didn’t work, rather that they needed to be more inventive with their approach to it.
If you’re looking to get started with Facebook (welcome to the party) or if you have a page but, probably due to the new Facebook algorithm, your reach has dropped, this article will help.
Why Facebook Marketing?
If you’re still waiting to be convinced of the value of Facebook for business, here are some stats.
- 1.71 billion active monthly users
- 22{66e969fac389fdbf78307a8d33f86d9ff7b85757f4840bdd3ec191b431dd167a} of internet time (compared to 11{66e969fac389fdbf78307a8d33f86d9ff7b85757f4840bdd3ec191b431dd167a} for Google and YouTube combined)
- 50 million active small business pages
- Only 2.5 million of those actively advertise – so there’s room for you!
It’s fair to say that Facebook isn’t going anywhere and with the ability to share a variety of content (text, video, images, GIFs etc) to a finely-tuned audience, what’s not to love.
While you may hear people claim Snapchat, Instagram or Twitter are their favourite social platforms, most of them are still checking Facebook every day.
- 1.13 billion people log onto Facebook daily – Instagram has 300 million daily users, Snapchat has 100 million and Twitter around 130 million.
- And for those who say the youngsters aren’t on it anymore – 50{66e969fac389fdbf78307a8d33f86d9ff7b85757f4840bdd3ec191b431dd167a} of 18-24 year-olds go on Facebook when they wake up. (Source: The Social Skinny)
Facebook Basics
(We’re assuming you already have a Facebook business page set-up, if not follow these simple instructions.)
With so many business pages on Facebook, it’s vital you’re showing off the best of your brand’s personality. Make sure the following page basics are representing your company in the best possible way:
- Profile Picture
- Cover Photo
- About
- Call To Action – think about what you want people to do when they visit your page
- Intro Video – not an essential but is a great addition.
Facebook News Feed
How Facebook decides who’s going to see what, is the multi-million dollar question they built the Facebook Empire on. While the secrets of the hugely successful algorithm remain an enigma we mortals can but guess at. We do know that Facebook looks at roughly 100,000 factors when deciding what it’s going to show, with the top four most likely being; Creator, Post, Type and Recency.
Creator – have they engaged with you (the post creator) in the past? If so, they are more likely to see future posts from you. This is why fun and engaging content, such as competitions, that involve commenting on posts are so effective. Not only do they create immediate engagement, but an ongoing benefit of future content you post being seen.
Post – Facebook will share a post with a small section of the people who like your page. If the post gets engagement (likes/comments/shares) then they’ll share it with a few more and so on. So, again, you want to put your best content out to encourage interaction.
Type – does this user usually interact more with photos, videos or links? Facebook will show more of the types of posts they prefer. Therefore, create posts in a variety of mediums and check Facebook insights to see which are more effective with your audience.
Recency – the more recent a post is, the higher the chance of it being seen.
Facebook Business Page Strategy
Facebook Business Newbies
If you’re new to Facebook then it’s important to try different types of posts to see what works for you. There’s not a one-kind-fits-all solution, you want to balance different forms of content to attract different users and keep your feed interesting:
- Photos – Products / Services / People
- Videos – Tutorials / Product Demonstration
- Questions and Polls
- Competitions
- Behind The Scenes
- Fill In The Blank
Remember: not every post has to have a CTA or sales message, fun content – which is likely to get more engagement – means your next post (potentially with a CTA) will reach more people.
Facebook Aficionados
So you’ve been doing this Facebook thing for a while, it’s time to have a look and see what’s working for your page. You can do this by checking the “Insights” tab from your page manager. Facebook Insights allows you to view your recent posts and see their reach and engagement.
Using this information, you can decide what types of posts (i.e. formats, images, wording, character count etc) work best for you.
Top Tip – Facebook Insights doesn’t just show you which of your posts are performing. You can use ‘Facebook pages to watch’ feature to see what your peers and competition are up to! Simply go to Insights, Pages to Watch and click blue link – this will bring up those pages most popular posts.
Give Your Post a Boost
Boosting your reach on Facebook doesn’t have to mean spending a lot of your marketing budget. If you see a post is doing well*, you can boost it for just a few pounds and significantly increase your reach.
When you boost a post you can choose various audience options; maybe you want more of your followers to see it, or you’d like their friends to see it as well, you can also target an entire new audience defined by Location, Interests, Age, and Gender.
Top Tip – Facebook have a nifty little feature called ‘invite to like’. Simply go to any of your posts that people have liked, click on the names of the people who have liked it and a pop up window will appear which allows you to invite anyone who has liked the post but doesn’t currently like your page to do just that.
* When deciding which posts to boost, Buffer provide a nifty little equation:
Total engagement / reach = potential (boost those with the highest potential)*
Facebook Business Page Strategy – Done (?)
You’ve set your branding, followed the tips, and looked at what’s working and what’s not. So you’re all good, right?
Wrong.
Facebook is an ever evolving beast and you have to constantly revisit, revise and tweak.
Keep checking the insights to monitor engagement and don’t be afraid to ask your audience what they think, polls on what they want to see more of are a great way to make sure you’re giving them what they want and get more engagement.
We hope this article provided you with some useful insights (see what we did there), now it’s over to you!
We’re Here to Help
Whether it’s getting you up and running, or managing your Facebook marketing on a regular basis – we’re here to help.
Call our friendly team for a chat on 01763 877110 or click this link to find out more.
Learn more about Facebook… check out our other recent Facebook articles:
