Believe it or not, the world did still turn before Facebook. However, this social media platform has become such an integral element of our lives and our businesses, it can be easy to miss how it can be efficiently used for the benefit of your company. Here are five ways you might not be using Facebook properly.
- Knowing your audience
Immediately you may be thinking ‘But I know my audience’. That is true, you probably do. However, when utilising Facebook, you REALLY need to know your audience. View your profile from a prospective customer’s point of view. Do you understand what your company offers? Are your key messages clear and concise?
- Engaging content
The next stage is the ability to retain your audience. Facebook can be, quite frankly, a battlefield for businesses. The key is knowing how to stand out from the crowd and making sure your posts are where the audience stops scrolling.
How can this be done? Creating a mixture of posts that contain media (photographs, videos and animations) and interactive elements (polls and questions), naturally prompts discussion amongst those who look at the page. This naturally shares your information to a wider audience and increases visibility to your target audience.
Working with Instagram and Vine, which both link to Facebook, are excellent ways to increase interaction, generating discussions and questions from your audience.
- Investing time
‘Fail to prepare, prepare to fail’.
Truer words cannot be spoken when it comes down to using Facebook as a business tool. Dedicating approximately 30 minutes a day to Facebook: be it posting, responding to new followers, finding new complementary companies or ensuring that a potential customer has the information they need, will seriously strengthen your presence!
Creating a six-month planner and a strategy will allow you to look ahead and focus on key elements of future events and dates for your company.
- Research, tools and analytics
Facebook is ever-evolving and its constant developments make it even more efficient. With the ability to schedule your posts on Facebook it allows precious time to be used wisely, especially when you know you cannot spare the time to sit and wait for the exact moment to create content.
Knowing when to post is another key element. Thankfully, with the assistance of ‘Insights’ within the ‘Manage your page’ section, Facebook can pinpoint your audience demographic and allow you to plan when you should be posting to maximise interaction.
The ‘Call to action’ button is another useful development which allows a business to present its most important object to the forefront of their Facebook page. Seven options are available including ‘book now’ which allows potential customers to directly engage with your company’s booking system and increase engagement as well as potential business opportunities.
Regularly analysing content and interaction with your posts will prove worthwhile as it provides the opportunity to evaluate how successful it has been and what can be done differently next time.
- Spelling and Grammatical errors
A very simple concept. Grammatical and spelling errors within online copy simply doesn’t look professional.
Read, read and read again. Failing that, ask somebody else within the team to read what you are posting and if, as an outsider, it makes sense. Remember, although Facebook isn’t the most formal concept in the world, your words are still a reflection on your company.
Facebook is one of the most fascinating segments of social media. Finding the right balance of what to post, when to post and how to post may take some time, but any investment in reputation management is time well spent.
