Most marketers know the importance of having a strong social media presence on Facebook, but many businesses neglect their pages to the point of ruin.
Branded Facebook pages and their organic communities are like a plant. You need to water it a little every day, trim out the dead spots, give it light to flourish, and occasionally fertilize it with special campaigns or overhauls. Yet, far too many marketers cripple their organic growth by forgetting to tend to their Facebook community like they should.
Know that giving your page just a little bit of attention a few times a week is all it takes for your page to become a recurring bumper crop of organic reach. Then, any organic Facebook marketing campaigns you create can be all the more successful.
You can kickstart your efforts to give your page — and your community — the attention it deserves by doing the following five things right now.
1. Complete Your Business Profile
Your first step is to take a run-through of your current profile information and the “About” section on your page. Is everything accurate? Descriptive? Interesting?
Verify that your business hours, phone number, address, contact information and other details are correct. Make sure you also have correct categories chosen for your business type and interest categories.
Finally, add something short but compelling to the “Story” section. Make it sound like your brand has evolved in some way since it opened, and explain what you and your team are most passionate about.
Believe it or not, people actually take the time to read all these aspects.
Many people even use Facebook as a type of Yellow Page directory now to find businesses that meet their needs, so ensure they have all the information available at their fingertips to make a purchase decision.
2. Take a Picture of Your Team and Post It
Quick! Grab everyone in the office! Now take a picture and post it! Bonus points if you can include a pet or some type of wacky prop.
It doesn’t matter what everyone’s wearing or how awful their hair looks; people want to see your company as real people. By posting a photo of your team online, you engage your audience not as brand but as a set of humans just trying to live day-to-day, like they are.
You can then pin the team photo to the top of your timeline, or — if you don’t have a good one already — set it as your cover photo.
Get in the habit of snapping photos during team meetings and events. The more behind-the-scenes photos you share, the more you can build a meaningful relationship with your audience as one of their peers, not just a brand.
3. Schedule a Post for a Peak Time
Take a look at your “Insights” tab to see a graph of your weekly engagement over time. If you are posting regularly, as in 1-2 times each week, you should see patterns of peaks and valleys for engagement.
Highlight a particularly great time to post as indicated by past data, and schedule an upcoming post for the exact same time. Then, schedule a post similar to the one that received high engagement at a different time you think may be optimal.
When both of these posts run, you will have more data at your disposal for seeing what times you can post in order to drive the most engagement. Experiment with combinations of post times and content to see what works best for you.
4. Turn on Audience Targeting for Organic Posts
Did you know you can target normal Facebook posts just like you do with paid/promoted posts? This feature can help you pinpoint action-prone audiences without spending a single extra dime on paid social campaigns.
To activate this feature, go into your page’s Settings tab under General and tick the box for “Allow preferred audience selection and the ability to restrict the audience for your posts.” You can now hit the crosshairs button when creating a post to build a custom audience for that post.
Why use targeting with organic posts? Because you might have something to say that only resonates with part of your audience demographic. Or, you want to test out demographics and interest groups to see which ones are most prone to engaging with certain post types.
As an experiment, you can create a targeted organic post promising an exclusive offer to your Facebook followers in a select interest group. By changing parameters and experimenting, you can determine your ideal audience and make connections for what drives them to take action.
5. Revise (Or Create) Your Page CTA Button
Every Facebook page now has a prominent Call to Action (CTA) button found just under the cover photo. You can modify this button to suit your needs, including:
- Directing people to a website page to place an order or “Learn More”
- Letting them call directly from the Facebook App
- Getting direct bookings through your preferred scheduling app
- Funneling people to a landing page or signup form
- Requesting they submit their email
Take a minute to look through all the options and consider which one might work best for you. Make a change, and keep an eye on your results to see if the change has optimized your conversions or leads generated.
Facebook Marketing Deserves Your Attention So Your Audience Can Grow and Thrive
Taking these steps can help amp up the appeal of your Facebook page, drive engagement with your audience and all-around show your page the attention it needs and deserves in order to thrive. By taking a moment to improve the experience of your community, you are actually taking the first step towards a closer connection with your audience that can benefit your brand in profound ways.