Give your Facebook Business Page a fresh start

Given the seemingly constant changes to Facebook, it’s easy to lose sight of what’s really important. Social media managers can get so caught up in day-to-day challenges that big-picture strategic issues aren’t always at the forefront. If you’re at risk for this social media myopia, here’s a checklist to ensure your Facebook Business Page is more likely to generate results.

• Use Facebook Insights to inform future decisions. Facebook Insights is an incredibly powerful tool, but it can be a bit overwhelming. If you want to make the most of insights, focus on what it tells you about your audience, what posts they’re responding to, and when they’re online. Use what you learn to make changes to your overall approach and then repeat the process, checking Insights at least monthly to ensure these adjustments continue to have the desired effect.
• Understand the limitations of organic reach. According to Hootsuite, organic reach — the likelihood followers will see something posted for free on a business page — is less than 6%, and as little as two percent for some Pages. That means paid strategies like boosted posts and advertising are now mandatory for just about every page. The key is having a budget and a plan that works in concert with your organic content.
• Use a content calendar. Planning your organic content starts with a calendar that helps you decide what to post when. This significantly reduces your labor, since you can anticipate holidays, industry theme days, milestones, and other dates important to your brand and plan what to post on these dates, leading up to them, and — if relevant — after. It’s one of the few chances we have to predict the future — and take action based on that information.
• Post often enough, but not too often. What’s the right cadence on Facebook? Most reputable sources recommend once a day for smaller pages and no more than twice a day for larger pages. More than that can negatively impact your organic reach. It’s also important to remember that quality is as important as quantity. Having a content calendar, as mentioned above, can help you ensure you’re posting information of value.
• Frequently post about people. The main reason most of us use social media is to connect with the people we care about — family, friends, and coworkers. As a result, posts about people tend to outperform just about anything else. Showcase your customers and employees often, and your story will become their story, too—and one they are much more likely to want to be part of and amplify.
• Ask more questions. When you add a question mark to the end of a post, it’s a signal to the reader that their input is encouraged. Sounds simple, right? Consider, however, that this doesn’t happen when you end a post with a period or exclamation point. This subtle difference reveals the power of questions in terms of getting the audience involved — a critical consideration, given how important engagement is to your posts being seen.
• Use more native video. It’s a competitive world, and Facebook wants to win against Google, among others. As a result, the Facebook algorithm favors native video— video uploaded directly to the platform — over video links from Google-owned YouTube and other competitor sites. Video performs much better than every other type of post, and native video on Facebook generates 10 times more reach than YouTube links. If you’re not using native video, therefore, you’re missing out.
• Consider using tools like Events, Groups, and Live. As Facebook has grown, so too have your options for connecting with others. If you haven’t revisited your strategy in a while, you may not be taking full advantage of features like:

- Events, which allow you to promote your live and virtual events to your followers — and beyond.

- Groups, which bring together subsets of your audience for discussion and interaction on a given topic. For example, a nonprofit may want to create a Group for its volunteers so they can dive deep into topics that may be important to them, but that wouldn’t be relevant to everyone following the page.

- Live, which lets you broadcast in real-time — it’s great for education, events, and interviews. According to AdWeek, Facebook Live videos receive three times more engagement than other video and five times that of standard photo posts.

These are just a few of the key considerations, but they represent a good start in avoiding complacency and giving some new energy to your page. As always, be sure to double down on what’s working well for you, but when you’re not getting results, don’t hesitate to switch gears and try something new.