Congratulations on Your Engagement

It’s now more important than ever to ensure you have a social media presence for your business. The business world has changed and online activity is more important than ever.

Facebook has over 2.6 billion monthly active users and over 1.7 billion of those are active on Facebook every single day. With this in mind I still get told that “Facebook doesn’t work for B2B businesses”. With 80 million small-medium sized businesses on Facebook (an increase of 23% year on year) and 6 million of those choosing to advertise on the platform - there certainly is a big reason to choose Facebook as one of your marketing channels.

Further to those stats - 54 percent of B2B marketers say that Facebook is their most important platform (an increase from 43 percent last year). This cuts into LinkedIn’s popularity, which fell from 37 to 28 percent.

Setting up your Business Page

So now we have established our reasoning for marketing on Facebook, lets now look at getting the basics right

Profile Picture…. It matters. Your profile picture should be clear and concise (150px by 150px) and you need to ensure it represents your brand. If you are a large company then focus it around your logo, if you are a small brand use a photo of you to show you as your brand

Your cover photo should also represent your brand and can be used to showcase products, give encouragement to visitors, show people visiting your location, show special offers or authenticity of your brand. One of the vital things we need to check with our cover photo is that it is optimized for desktop and mobile and doesn’t outstretch or skew when using the mobile version

You should ensure your page has a call to action button. What do you want your visitors to do? Call you, message you or visit your website. Make it nice and clear the action you want

Facebook Analytics

How often do you check your analytics and insights? Do you even check them? If not why not?

If you don’t check your analytics how do you know what works and what doesn’t work? Sometimes we presume we know who is interacting and engaging with our posts, we presume what works because we blindly follow what generically works. But every business is different and what works for one doesn’t work for all.

We can find a range of data inside our page analytics such as:

·        Page reach – How many people our post got in front of

·        Times and days our audience is active on Facebook

·        Which post types work best for us – videos, photos, links

·        Negative Feedback – Are you being reported for spamming or are people unfollowing / hiding your posts

These are just a few of the key metrics we should be checking. By knowing this data and acting upon it we can build our organic (free) reach and get our posts seen by more people

Types of Posts

Pre-Recorded Video

Video is a growing post type on Facebook. Generically FB video has a 135% greater organic reach than photo posts. It allows people to really get to know you and understand you and your business. It’s a great way of you showing yourself as an expert and being able to provide value to your customers. Facebook generates over 8 billion video views on average on a daily basis

Photos

Allow you to be able to showcase products and information. Although its reach is less likely to be as great as video it is a great way to mix up your content and add variety

Links

Links to outside websites should be kept to a minimum. Try not to link to news articles or YouTube videos and instead embed them directly into Facebook. By linking to an outside website you are taking people away from the platform and FB wants to keep people on its platform as long as possible so they can show more advertisements and make more revenue

Facebook Live

By far the best way to build your reach. People spend 3 times longer watching video which is live compared to pre-recorded. You can engage and interact with your audience live and answer any questions they may have. Yes it can be daunting to begin with but after a while you will get used to it and soon it will become natural. People don’t expect it to be perfect. Just provide value and people will get to know the real you. Find a quiet location, keep the camera steady and click record. Lapel mics and tripods can be found cheaply online and help make it look more professional

What Can I Post About?

Knowing what type of content to post about can be a struggle for many business owners. Here is a few ideas of what you can post about

-         Tell Stories – Talk about successes e.g. when you took a client from a problem to a solution

-         Trending Topics – What is in the news at the moment which is relevant to your business / niche. Then give your opinion on it

-         Relevant Viral Videos / Photos / Memes – Remember the key to social media is being social on media – it sounds simple but it’s true. Funny photos and videos work well but make sure it’s relevant to your business

-         Ask Relevant Questions – Simple questions are a great way to build engagement which in turn will help build your organic reach. But make sure it is a relevant question for your business because otherwise you become irrelevant and people will scroll past your future posts thinking you have nothing of value to offer

-         Reviews – A great way to show social proof for your business and showcase what you can do for other potential clients. Take a screenshot of the review and post it directly onto your timeline

-         Behind the Scene – Show people the day to day goings on in your business. It builds on the know, like and trust

-         Competition – Run a competition for your clients and customers to build engagement and get them involved in your business

-         Events – Are you hosting a webinar or workshop, or attending an event? Let your customer and clients know

Facebook Groups

Groups are a great way of you providing value to your clients. 200 million people are members of meaningful Facebook Groups which is an increase of double the amount from last year. This is supporting Facebook’s five-year goal of 1 billion meaningful Group members. (There are already 1 billion Group members, but ‘meaningful’ Groups are communities that become a key part of a user’s experience.)

Facebook’s algorithm prioritises meaningful interactions between friends, family and communities (over brands, for instance), Groups are an opportunity to gather like-minded individuals together.

When building a group focus it around providing value. Do not name your group the same as your business. Instead name it around a topic area you can help with. For example a driving school would have a group such as ‘Learner Driver’s Advice Group’. By doing this it isn’t seen as “salesy”, instead it it is seen as a group to offer support to them and show you as the expert

In Conclusion

Building your Facebook presence is vital and the more you put in the more you get out of it. It won’t come from a single post. It will come from consistently turning up on social media every single day. Provide value and engage with your audience and you will reap the rewards. Be the expert and show your customers that you are that person they need