During a recent session at OMI Social, Mobile and Digital Marketing Boot Camp in Los Angeles, CA, instructor, Sundeep Kapur, shared Facebook marketing tips to help grow your fan base and engage your fans. Facebook is a great place to connect and build relationships with your customers. Here are 5 key takeaways from the Digital Marketing Boot Camp about Facebook marketing.
1. Specify the location in your Facebook posts. Have you ever posted something for your business like “We’re in Huntington Beach selling jewelry on the pier, stop by and check out our inventory,” and made it viewable to “Public?” This may seem like a great thing to do; however, if your brand is a national brand, it’s irrelevant to a lot of your fans that aren’t in that location. Next time you’re posting a status update that would only appeal to people in a particular area, specify the target location by selecting “Location” and typing in the location of the people you think would benefit from seeing the post. This keeps you from accidentally spamming your other fans who wouldn’t be interested in that piece of location-sensitive information.
2. Highlight your best posts. If you have a post that you think is particularly great content, click the star in the upper right corner of the post to “highlight” it. This makes the story double the width so it stands out among the other posts on your Timeline.
3. Ask your fans questions. Asking your fans for their opinion is a great way to encourage comments. The more comments on a post, the more likely it is to show up in your fans’ Newsfeeds. Try asking them to share a story about how their use your product, or to finish your sentence by filling in a blank (Ex: My favorite thing to eat at Sarah’s Pizza is ____”). You’ll find that you’ll get more responses to your posts when you encourage participation this way.
4. Use Facebook Sponsored Stories and Ads. According to the OMI session, it’s best to use Sponsored Stories in order to grow your fan base. Choose the “page like story” under sponsored stories. This is using friends’ endorsement which increases the story’s click-through rate (CTR). If you’re looking to grow your engagement, use Facebook Ads and choose “Ad from a page post.” This ad will display the post of your choice for friends and friends of friends to see.
5. Photos and videos get the most attention. The best posts on Facebook are those that include a photo or video. People love looking at this kind of content on Facebook and they are more likely to interact with a post if it includes an eye-catching photo or interesting video, so post this kind of content as often as possible.
If you’re like many brands, your company is on both Facebook and Twitter social networks. If you don’t understand the nature of both social networks, you may make the mistake of thinking it is okay to post the exact same content on both. However, although Facebook and Twitter are both social networks that allow you to engage and connect with your customers, they’re also very different. Writing specifically for each requires thought and if you’re posting the exact same thing on both, the people who follow you on both networks will get bored, frustrated and may unfollow you. It’s okay to post about the same topics, like a recent blog or company event but it’s not okay to say it in the exact same way. Follow these tips to customize your posts specifically for Facebook and Twitter as two separate social networks.